Where the Shadows Meet the Sea (Pt 2 Tempestuous Shadows Stygian Seas)
by likegallows
Summary: They had been so close to escaping before it all fell apart. Percy survived Tartarus but at what cost? But Percy must push on to save a world he's not convinced is worth it when all he wants is a quest to save the boy who kept saving him. Somewhere along the way, he'll have to decide what those final moments really meant to him.
1. Chapter 1

**Where the Shadows Meet the Sea**

 **Chapter 1**

 **A Super Awkward Elevator Ride and A Less Than Welcoming Back Party**

 **Percy**

He had never seen anything like it. A wall of shadows threw him back against the wall of the elevator and the more he struggled against them, the more deeply they wound around his arms and legs and chest, holding him in place. They didn't frighten him. They wouldn't hurt him, not really. Because they were part of Nico and the teenager stood outside the door, cobalt eyes fixed on him as the sea prince spat and clawed with all his might to his restraints. He knew that look.

It was the look he'd seen in Luke's eyes.

The one as he'd taken the dagger.

It was the _last_ look.

"Don't you dare, Nico. Don't you fucking dare! I _promised_. I promised I wouldn't leave you behind. You can't— you can't do this!"

Percy couldn't say what else he shouted. He couldn't remember the words but later he would remember that his throat was raw and his voice was hoarse. He'd shouted long beyond Nico's ability to hear him. But he was desperate as he clawed against the shadows, tugged and pulled at them, but they wouldn't move. The second that Nico broke eye contact and turned away that was it. There was no going back and just as the son of Hades had taken a moment to memorize everything about him as he held up a pale hand and closed his fingers in a silent goodbye, Percy refused to blink. He refused to look away.

Small Bob came skidding into the elevator between the slats in the wrought iron doors and took to licking the back of his boned claw. They were stained with ichor but that was something he'd noticed later. At that moment he watched as Nico and Bob swapped places.

"Bob— Bob you have to let me out. You can't do this. You can't do this. You don't have to die for me… _Nico_ doesn't have to die for me. We can save him."

The Titan looked at him for a moment and for a second he thought that he had gotten through to him. That he had convinced him. "Let me do this for him." Percy wasn't above begging. "Please, Bob."

"Tell the stars Bob says hello. I miss the stars." The Titan gave a small smile and from the way his silver eyes rolled upwards, Percy was sure that the other was trying to recall them. To remember what they looked like. How they hung in the sky, twinkling above them. When Bob glanced back down, his hand lifted to hover above the button.

"I didn't give you a second thought! All those things Nico told you — I _never_ asked about you. I never thought to because I _forget_ people. Just like I forgot Nico." The words rushed from Percy; the truth. "I'm _not_ a good person but he is. Bob, he's your best friend. He's done everything for both of us. We have to save him."

"Bob has done much bad as Iapetus. Be better, friend." Bob's eyes shone with unshed tears.

"Take care of him." His thumb slammed the up button and the elevator launched at impossible speeds with the son of the sea screaming and he wasn't sure whether he was supposed to take care of Small Bob or if Small Bob was supposed to take care of him.

They hurtled upwards but the sides of the elevator were glass and he could see Nico di Angelo as he ran towards Tartarus. The specter versions of himself were nearly indistinguishable as they attacked and taunted the god's physical form. The ground swelled up to meet their feet, the specter and real Nico alike, as they ducked and dodged and brought their swords to bare on him. Percy knew which one was the real Nico. He radiated a dark energy, drew the shadows to him and they pooled around him like reluctant subjects, and for a second he could have sworn that the son of Hades had majestic black wings like an Angel of Death (or maybe he was hallucinating between the blood loss and injury and sheer exhaustion).

The scream resonated up the elevator shaft, echoing as the world below began to tear apart.

And that was it. They were too far. There was nothing more to see.

Percy knew the moment that Nico died.

The shadows lost their grip, slipped away into the ether and became translucent, more like murky air than shadows, until they dissolved. Small Bob let out a wretched meowl like he was being tortured as Percy fell to the floor on his hands and his knees. The _thud_ reverberated through the whole of his body. His weak arm gave way and Percy smacked his face off the floor, cursing. Percy didn't get up. He stayed crouched on the floor with his hands on either side of his head as he screamed and punched the floor until his knuckles bled. There was already blood in his mouth, he could taste the sharp metal, washing away the clove and spearmint flavor of Nico. Small Bob continued to wail at his side. He brushed his thumb across the skull ring on his finger, wiping blood from it as he stared at it, whole body heavy.

"Such a shame. The strong ones are the most delicious." The mosquito faced goddess piped up from the corner.

Until that moment, Percy forgot that she was there. His fingers curled into themselves until his nails embedded into the palm of his good hand, the other barely closed. There wasn't enough air to fill his lungs. Percy struggled to take a breath. There wasn't enough oxygen. They were hurtling upwards too quickly. Inside of his chest, his heart sputtered. He clawed at his throat but there was nothing there, nothing at his chest, nothing restricting his breathing. Still, he floundered like a fish out of water as he gasped for air. A hand came down swiftly against his back, close to his injured shoulder, and pain blossomed throughout his form. His lungs soon filled, a massive inhale, like his head had finally broken above water.

"I'd rip your wings off and stuff them down your throat before I'd let you near him," Percy growled in warning.

"You better get up, demigod. I'm sure it won't be just your friends that are waiting for us."

 _What does being alive matter? You failed him. You didn't protect him. You left him. Again. And this time you won't get a chance to fix it._

"I don't care."

"Well you _should_."

Did it matter? Did any of it really matter? The one person who he _needed_ wasn't there with him. Had died for him. He couldn't picture anything else. For the first time since before they had fallen into the pit, Percy Jackson had a second. He had a whole handful of seconds. Just under 600 seconds remaining, to be specific. And in those seconds weariness seeped into his bones. Percy was exhausted. When was the last time he slept? A sleep that wasn't due to concussion or injury causing him to be unconscious? And when had he last eaten _real_ food? No, nothing since the stew Damasen had offered them. Then there was the pain. The missing muscles of his arm, torn and tattered. The ankle still swollen and tender. Every arai that had stabbed him or clawed him. The empousa that tore into his flesh.

As the elevator rocketed skyward his lungs struggled. Percy's muscles began to shake even as he laid on the floor.

"He was a fool."

Green eyes lifted, hard and unblinking, they met Ker's compound ones. Her lips curled upwards in a smile. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

"He was a fool and you'd let his sacrifice be for nothing."

"Shut up." Percy warned as the fingers of his good arm dug into the floor.

"If I had known he was going to throw his life away, I would have killed him myself."

"I said shut up."

"I would have feasted on his flesh as I did the muscle of your wasted arm."

The son of the sea was up and on his feet in record time. The stygian blade was at the goddess' throat, or at least it would have been if she had not disappeared in a poof of smoke only to reappear behind him, pressing her fingernails deep into the wounded flesh of his bad arm, ripping a scream from his lungs. Spots swam in front of his eyes and Small Bob spat. Despite the nails ripping into the muscles, he turned and jabbed with the stygian blade but she was gone once more, appearing to his right instead.

"I could have waited, you know. I could have waited for Philotes to be finished with him. Do you know what she would have done? Because I have seen what she does to make unwilling men lovers. I have seen the look in their eyes after."

"Don't you fucking dare speak about him!" Pain flared in his ankle as he turned attempting to best the goddess but she flickered in and out, cackling all the while. Her laughter was like a thousand razorblades slicing into the already torn flesh of his arm and grating on his last nerve.

"Or you'll what? You couldn't _protect_ him, what makes you think you can harm me?"

The words bit too deep, they burned like acid and white hot ash and Percy could see nothing but Nico pale and seizing. Nico collapsing after saving him yet again. Nico trying to hold Percy while Geras sucked the years from him. Nico and the way he'd torn apart hellhounds when Percy nearly had his face bitten off. Nico sleeping next to him, thumb in his mouth and sword in hand ready to fight the world if it meant protecting Percy Jackson. Nico in the river, blood dripping from his hands and his mouth as he took sip after sip unfazed by the gore they had to consume to keep Tartarus from burning them alive. Nico and the way he'd looked, lips damp and eyes lost as he pulled back from the kiss. The way that look had changed to determination as he used the shadows to throw Percy towards safety and kept him there. Nico and the last look on his face that he'd ever see. The final words that he didn't understand but squeezed his heart because he knew the _tone_.

The stygian blade felt like ice shooting from his hand straight to his heart but all the son of Poseidon could do was to fight. There was a tempest raging inside of him and it didn't matter who was there. He had to fight _something_. And a stupid insectoid goddess who not only took up space where Nico deserved to be beside him, but wanted to feast on the flesh of dying demigods as the war raged? No. He wouldn't lose anyone else. The thought had Percy practically frothing at the mouth.

"There was nothing I could do to stop him!"

"Wasn't there? Didn't you _fail_ him? Fail to find a way to protect Nico? Just like you're going to fail your friends?"

That didn't matter. None of it did. The only thing that mattered, as Percy held firmly to the stygian blade in his good hand and swung at the goddess, was that he strike her head from her shoulders and stop her from every uttering another word about Nico. She disappeared again, and reappeared out of the arc of the blade just before the steel could destroy her essence. Percy tried again and again but the black metal clanked against the sides of the elevator always a fraction of a fraction too late. Small Bob hissed and howled until eventually he was using his long nails to climb up Percy's leg as if he were a scratching post. But Percy didn't notice, not when he was hellbent on killing the goddess of violent death in a fashion befitting her patronage.

At some point his vision began to swim, black dots in front of his eyes and yet he kept coming, surging like the ocean at high tide against a sea wall.

Percy didn't even notice as the elevator slowed to a stop and gave a final loud _ding!_ before the doors opened into the belly of an ancient and forgotten temple. Ker hooked a clawed hand into the grate and pushed it up, ducked beneath and took flight and disappeared into the gloom of the cavern that opened up around them. Percy shouted after her, but the words didn't matter so much as the rage that boiled in his blood (and he wouldn't remember what he said later anyway because he was going on instinct only). As he surged from the elevator, his weaker ankle forgotten, the ground felt like it was still moving, like they were still traveling at ridiculous speeds upwards, but the son of Poseidon half tripped and kept going with Small Bob on his heels. The kitten morphed into a saber tooth tiger skeleton mid jump and landed beside Percy with a ferocious roar.

The cavern appeared too brightly lit for his eyes and caused him to squint though it was only a few lanterns of Grecian fire, there was fire. Fire everywhere. Dust and debris fell from the ceiling and anywhere he turned there was commotion. A twenty foot fall shadow of a giant was slashing with its massive blade, while Earthborn were piling into the chapel from tunnels, calling forth pointy rocks that they hurled at their prey. Black fog rolled off the giant in waves and while it didn't appear exactly the same as the death mist, he knew it to be as deadly. The stygian blade he held seemed to absorb it leaving Percy free from harm but the icy feeling creeped from the blade up his arm once more.

It reacted to the mist, pulled it in and devoured it the way it devoured the souls struck down by it.

Earthborn pressed in all around them, clamoring around the feet of the dusky giant and with each razor edged rock they called forth from the ground, Percy could see his friends dodging and fighting back. Jason flew overhead, Hazel and some blonde haired goddess along with Leo and Frank attacked the giant. Three girls were dispatched against the Earthborn, he ducked beneath one's legs and stabbed upwards with his black blade. As it melted into clay, its essence was sucked into the blade and it felt colder in his hand again.

Or maybe that was because the room temperature dropped around him and with each ragged exhale he could see his breath in increasingly tangible clouds before him. It was cold and damp so far below the ground and Percy might have shivered as the edges of the Necromenteion blossomed with frost. He might have, if his blood wasn't boiling. Ker had disappeared from his line of sight and as he turned one of the Earthborn's sharp rocks clipped his already damaged arm enough to send a trill of pain up his spine. Percy growled.

Everything was a blur. He was hardly seeing, as he slashed, kicked, tore, and all the while he could feel her hovering. Feel Ker like a breath on the back of his neck and if he could cut down everything in the room then he could find her and break her into pieces. Percy's lungs heaved and eventually he fell to his knees because all of him felt like lead and his heart was beating too hard. It was quiet around him but for the rushing of blood in his ears and the sound of his name from somewhere distant. It sounded foreign— _it's not supposed to echo, is it?_ — and at first he didn't recognize it because it didn't come from Nico's mouth.

The sword slipped from his fingers because it was impossibly heavy in his hand all of a sudden and his fingers had gone numb. It clattered on the floor and echoed against the stone floor. Everything was heavy. His body slumped down, exhausted and shaking. His hands covered his ears as he tries to shut out the noise around him and focus on his breath (because it creaked through his throat like a door closing and that wasn't normal).

 _A minute. I just need a minute._

A hand rested gently on his shoulder and just as quickly, his good hand shot up, grabbed the wrist and twisted until he felt the snap of bones satisfying to his core as they broke. A cry of pain was followed by sobbing and the offending appendage was removed from his shoulder. When Percy lifted his green eyes there was a group surrounding him, looking down at him, and though their faces were familiar their expressions were not (fear, horror, disgust).

Percy saw strangers where he should have seen friends and he felt lost.

"Percy."

 _Annabeth._

She kneeled down before him, her hands palm out as if to show they were empty. She did not try to touch him and he watched her settle just out of his reach.

"Percy— it's us. You did it… you made it. You _did_ it."

 _The only thing you did was leave Nico behind._

Couldn't they see it written on his face? How he had failed everyone and everything? Grey eyes watched him and he could tell that she was waiting for him to take one of her hands and stand back up but Percy didn't move. His stomach churned.

"Where's Nico?"

Another voice. That one was not soft as it demanded. And then it demanded again and again growing more and more shrill each time.

"Give him a minute," Annabeth tried to interject.

"He can have a minute in a second," Piper said but she may as well have been on the opposite end of a dark tunnel, her voice echoing through his ears.

" _Where's Nico?"_

"What happened?" Blonde waves spilled from her ponytail high on her head over pale shoulders until they met a deep purple dress. Deep purple… like the pit. Like his limbs. Like his vortex face. But her voice was soft and her green eyes glowed faintly demanding his attention. "Where is the other demigod?"

The words echoed across his consciousness. He needed them to be quiet.

Everyone.

 _Stop talking._ Percy needed to get out of this dark, dank place back to the sunlight and the **air** , the kind that wasn't humid or freezing but _fresh_ and _real_ and not _stale_ or hanging over him like it was about to drop down onto his shoulders with the weight of the world and bury him alive and suffocating. Maybe then his lungs would act the way the way they were always supposed to work, maybe then it wouldn't feel like his heart was trying to cut its way out of his chest. _Stop talking and just give me a second._ But they didn't stop talking. To him? Amongst themselves? He couldn't focus long enough to tell the difference (and all the while the one question kept echoing in the back of his head).

When he tried to stand Percy fell back onto his knees just as quickly as if Tartarus himself were reaching up from the pit to drag him back down. Using the one good arm he had left, he fell forward, forehead to the ground as if it were his second hand, and attempted to calm his breathing.

" _Where's Nico?"_

When he swallowed he tasted cloves and spearmint and shadows.

" _Where's Nico?"_

It was jarring. It was confusing.

"Percy?"

When he managed to push himself back up into a kneeling position his vision was darkening around the edges. Ker flitted around the apex of the cavern and she smiled at him, and raised a finger before her disturbing face, as if to say _shhh_.

His eyes rolled up into the back of his head and his muscles were no longer his own.

"I think he's having a fit."

And the darkness took him.


	2. What We Wish For Can Have Unintended Con

**Where the Shadows Meet the Sea**

 **Chapter 2**

 **What We Wish For Can Have Unintended Consequences**

 **Annabeth**

From the time she had arrived at Camp Half Blood, the daughter of Athena had bristled when others were chosen to go on quests. She was clever. She knew more and learned faster than any other camper, including the majority of her siblings. Time and time again she watched as demigod children left and did one of two things: returned in glory (maimed, bruised, broken, and often with a different sort of look in their eyes than before they'd left), or never returned at all.

It hadn't occurred to her that there was anything wrong with either.

They had been _chosen_ and it was their _chance_. And she had always wanted that— a chance to prove her worth, her wit, her skills to everyone— and especially to herself. Annabeth could do anything, she was sure of it and so she had wondered again and again: _why not me_?

Luke had fluffed her messy blond hair and laughed at her. "Your chance will come," he'd promised, though he had never seemed as excited about the prospect. She hadn't understood. Maybe she was too young.

Or maybe she had been too naive.

Maybe she didn't blame her mother in the way that Luke did (after all, it was her father who had remarried, her father with a mortal wife and _normal_ children… what space was there for her?). Her issue had never been with her godly parentage but with a mortal one whose neat little picket fenced box she had grown out of with age. Camp Half Blood had been her home and she'd quickly dismissed the one half of herself in favor of the other— the one that wanted to prove herself to the gods, including her mother. To lead a quest. To emerge victorious and prove to the demigods that were stronger, with more prominent or apparently useful gifts, that wit and strategy could best brawn any day.

The dark of the cavern was streaked with firelight as Leo Vasquez created streams of fire like she'd never seen the son of Hephaestus do before. He was joined by Hecate whilst Hazel surged towards Clytius with her blade using magic and misdirection to confuse the giant. Gems flew from the walls puncturing the giant's armor like bullets, blood ran freely from each wound. Whether it had been his cries, or Gaea herself, monsters began to flood into the centre of the Necromanteion from the adjoining passages.

The daughter of Athena cursed under her breath but remained where she was, thumb jammed against the elevator button. In her other hand she held her celestial bronze knife ready to strike at the first monster Earthborn or empousa stupid enough to try to distract her from her task. She _would_ keep the button pressed until the doors finally opened and spilled for whatever its contents. Annabeth said a quick prayed to her mother because she would give _anything_ for Percy to come loping out of the Doors of Death with that familiar windswept look to his hair hair, sea green eyes searching the Necromanteion until they found her. They would crinkle in the corner as he flashed her that easy grin, nothing like the ghoulish corpse figure from her vision. He would look like himself again. Then he would rush into the fray to help their friends and she'd be free to follow on his heels.

When the dust settled he would rush to her, wrap his arms around her and plant a kiss in her hair. After that, he would kiss her, like the way he'd done when she'd found him at Camp Jupiter. Things would fall into place from there.

Expectations had a way of not being met for the daughter of Athena.

An Earthborn launched a sharp rock above her head and as it crashed against the stone wall all Annabeth could do was throw up one of her arms to attempt to cover her head from the shrapnel that fell around her. She was bruised and cut from the falling debris but she never released any of the pressure on the button. Finally the doors opened and with a loud shriek, she supposed that the doors had to be forced the rest of the way open.

Something grey and blood streaked took flight, disappearing into the shadows the firelight of Hecates and Leo's attacks cast on the ceiling. Annabeth blinked. That wasn't like any monster she had ever seen before. Then again, there were things so old and forgotten in Tartarus, she doubted even the gods themselves would remember them all.

Clytius roared in pain, swatting at her friends. In doing so he knocked a pillar over and in addition to the whole building shaking and shuttering, rabble came flying in her direction. Annabeth jumped, somersaulting out of the way. Where she had stood was enough rubble she was certain she wouldn't have made it. Unfortunately, diving out of the way lead her straight into the path of an empousa and the bronze legged woman kicked at her side. Annabeth stabbed at her middle with her knife but only managed to nick her and she hissed in pain.

"I will enjoy drinking your blood demi-bitch," she hissed. Before the monster could begin her charmspeak, Annabeth stuffed her fingers in her ears and kicked her in the stomach. Whilst she was doubled over in pain, Annabeth stabbed her with her knife, blood spattered and she began to disintegrate before her eyes. With her heart racing and mind reeling, she heard a roar unlike anything a giant, Earthborn, or empousai.

A shiver slithered its way up her spine whispering to each of her vertebrae in turn. The hair on the back of Annabeth's neck stood on end.

Across the room Calypso and Reyna's attention both faltered for a second looking towards the noise. Stormy eyes followed their gaze until she spotted it. A spartus, like the one they had seen in the Smithsonian but twice the size of a tiger. It roared again. And behind it, a dark haired boy with wild eyes and dark hair. He was covered in grime and blood. It was crusted beneath his fingernails and dried to his skin. Some of it copper, some of it nearly black, and some of it very fresh. The blade in his hand was as dark as night and her blood froze because she _knew_ that blade. The air around him almost crackled with energy as he cried out and like a hurricane, he blew across the Necromanteion. He moved with incredible speed, engaging and slaying monster after monster with the spartus not far behind.

The demon cat closed its jaws on an empousa's head until it separated from her body and he jumped from her ash-exploding body towards Clytius and sunk his fangs into the giant's legs. Annabeth was conscious of this even as she was moving to help her friends but it was Piper who worried her. Piper with black orbs where her eyes should be, the black mist around her as she shuffled like a stop motion picture, Katoptris in her hand. She was beelining for Hazel who couldn't see her, not from the angle of her attack on Clytius. Sucking in a breath, Annabeth ran as fast as she could, ducking and dodging through monsters until she was flying from behind and tackled Piper. Her blade clattered from her hand and Clytius cried out through her mouth.

But the giant was down on his knees, crying out. The black mist hissing in the air was being absorbed by the blade the storm ridden boy carried and as if in unison Hazel and he stabbed the giant. He slipped into clay and was absorbed back into the earth.

Silence fell across the Necromanteion… silence but for their ragged breathing and the sound of swords or weapons being sheathed once more. A wave of nervous laughter broke around the once holy place, the maniacal kind of coming down off adrenaline and realizing that everyone is still alive.

Annabeth rolled off Piper and the other girl coughed, her body retching as tendrils of black smoke dissipated from her lungs. When she was finished, she groaned and pushed herself up on her knees until she was back on her feet. She stretched her limbs each in turn and shook her head. "Honestly, I feel really violated right now."

There was nothing she could say, so Annabeth placed her hand on the younger girl's shoulder.

Leo joined her side and placed his hand on her other shoulder. Instead of making a crack— because what humor could he find in the situation?— he said darkly, "I'm going to scorch that dirtbag bitch."

A questioning mewl so out of place pulled Annabeth's attention back from her friends to the centre of the room. There, in the middle of everything, Percy Jackson dropped the black blade and it clattered to the floor as he followed suit. The spartus, once more a tiny skeletal kitten, rubbed up against her boyfriend's leg and cried out again as if to question him.

"Percy?"

Hazel stood opposite her with her large eyes wild, golden curls sticking up in a hundred different directions from her tussle with Clytius. She was bleeding and clearly injured but Annabeth followed her gaze. The Doors of Death had reset and disappeared leaving behind a broken alter. There was no sign of her brother. The daughter of Athena watched as her eyes flew back to Percy and then to the floor where the stygian blade rest at his feet.

 _That's Nico's blade._

Reyna, with her red cape billowing around around her, moved to rest her hand on the other boy's shoulder. No doubt she could lend some of her strength to the other demigod to help pull him to his feet. The second her hand rest on his shoulder Annabeth could feel it. She knew the other so well, she could see the instantaneous reaction of tension and she opened her mouth to yell for the leader of the Romans to pull back but it was too late. Percy's hand flew like lightning and she could feel the crack of bone like nails on a chalk board. It set her stomach churning. The praetor cried out in pain and stumbled backwards.

Calypso was by her side immediately singing soft songs and holding the damaged appendage. But Annabeth's attention was on her boyfriend. For a moment she froze in the spot, too frightened to move. This boy looked like Percy but he also looked like a feral animal, wild eyed, and not unlike he was caged. He was covered in blood and where his clothing had been torn or singed there were more wounds and bruises of varying stages than she cared to count. Then there was the question of his arm and his shoulder— she didn't have a good view of it but there was something seriously wrong with it.

 _Move. He needs you._

Then her feet carried her forward. It was probably the closest to an out of body experience she had ever had because she spoke, she caught his eyes, she _tried_ but it didn't really feel like it was her. She thought that he would look up, his green eyes would lock with hers and there would be that recognition. They would soften. He might smile at her and then they could leave. His green eyes were stagnant pools sunk deeper in his face than she remembered. He had tried to say something, to ask for something, but his eyes rolled in the back of his head and he spasmed. She'd never seen anyone have a seizure before and she knelt, frozen, watching.

"The ceiling's coming down. We need to leave like _now_." Piper insisted. The words hardly penetrated the haze around Annabeth as she watched her boyfriend where he lay on the ground.

"We can't leave. We don't know where Nico is," Hazel started.

"Hazel," Frank slipped an arm around her, his tone soft but firm. It reminded her of animal control trying to rescue a frightened cat from a tree as it hissed and spit, untrusting of strangers.

"He could be here." The daughter of Pluto insisted. "He could be hurt. We _have_ to try to find him."

"You saw the elevator the same as I did. He wasn't in there."

"Then where is he?"

She wasn't quite hysterical but her voice kept rising and tears welled in her eyes. Annabeth stood and turned to Jason, swallowing what felt like a million razorblades in her throat.

"Can you… can you help me with him?" She finally found her voice.

"You don't even have to ask."

Annabeth moved to reach down, her limbs finally moving, but the spartus hissed at her and took a swipe with his tiny kitten paw. From the way its back arched, the daughter of Athena wasn't entirely convinced that it wouldn't mutate into a massive tiger and bite her face off. Jason tried and once again the boned creature lashed out, this time it managed to snag one of his fingers. He was silent but raised the wounded appendage to his mouth to suck the blood from it.

" _Please_. We need to get him out of here before the whole building comes down. Please."

It was stupid. Talking to a demonic creature that likely had no reason to listen to her, and was less likely to answer her. When she reached out again, though, the kitten spat but refrained from swiping at her. Instead, it crawled into the boy's hair and quite clearly latched onto the matted mess.

"They really are truly special creatures," the goddess mused. Hecate, as a final act of favor for Hazel, assisted in whisking them away just as the historic temple collapsed in on itself.

They appeared on a hill side with the sun low in the sky over them. "You must hurry to Athens. The giants have risen and the earth mother will follow if you do not stop her." The goddess turned to Calypso and offered a small smile. "My dear, it's nice to see you free."

Annabeth wasn't particularly interested in Hecate (as impressive as a goddess as she was, there were sort of more pressing things on her hands like half the weight of her boyfriend). The sound of Hazel fretting and crying grated like nails on a chalkboard. Annabeth didn't have time to feel anything. Not until Percy was okay.

Jason was holding the majority of Percy's weight with both arms around the other boy's middle to help keep him up. He would have taken him by the arm and allowed Annabeth the other but up close the son of Poseidon was far too wounded. His expression wasn't exactly peaceful even with his eyes closed because his forehead is scrunched with brows meeting at the bridge of his nose and his weight…

"What happened to you?" She whispered as fingers stroked down his cheek.

When grey eyes met sky blue, it's not quite pity she reads in Jason's expression but whatever it was dropped her stomach and she glances away.

"I knew he'd be banged up but I didn't picture this," Jason finally said to break the silence between them. Annabeth took a moment and then steeled herself and shook her head to clear away the last few seconds of worry. She didn't have time. Not yet. Not yet. Because then she wouldn't stop.

"We need to get him on board the ship. Hopefully between Coach Hedge and Calypso we can help him." One foot in front of the other. A plan. A course of action. Something that she could do because thinking, right then, would not be her friend.

"I've got him. You come up with the others. I'll get him settled, okay?" Jason offered and Annabeth did not decline. It was difficult to look at him like that and it wasn't as if she could carry him up the ladder onto the _Argos II_ herself.

"Reyna— about your wrist. I'm so s—-" Annabeth began as she fell into step with the Roman and Calypso. The praetor cradled it close to her but her expression was unyielding; it was impossible to tell how badly it hurt.

"There is nothing to apologize for, Annabeth. His actions were not his own. Soldiers do not always come back from battle as they left." The words sent ice shooting through her veins. Annabeth glanced toward Calypso whose gaze has not strayed from Reyna's, and nods her head, clearly in agreement.

"Seventeen days is a long time." Calypso added.

It felt like a lifetime.

"He'll be okay. He's strong. He's always been strong." She insisted.

"Tartarus…" Calypso's eyes finally moved from Reyna toward Annabeth. The demigod can't help but notice how carefully the goddess was in choosing her words when she had never been particularly diligent before. "Time runs differently. Percy may have been down there for weeks, months, half a year. It's impossible to say."

 _Half a year…_

"He's strong." She repeated but her voice was swallowed by the sound of their footsteps.

Annabeth could feel her chest growing tight and lifted a hand, knuckles pressed to her sternum as she attempted to unknot the feeling. Calypso slipped an arm around her to help keep Annabeth steady on her feet but her voice was temporarily lost.

A hand took her own and gave it a squeeze. Grey eyes widened as she looked down and then up to see Calypso and Reyna giving her small smiles she was sure were meant to be reassuring. The daughter of Athena attempted to force something close to thankful but she couldn't feel anything.

 _If Percy thinks he was down there that long… how much has he seen? How much has he been through?_ Part of her was vaguely aware that she should be questioning the same things of Nico. But was it her fault that she didn't have it in her?

One problem at a time.

One focus.

Her shoulders could only bare the weight of one train of thought; she'd always choose Percy.


	3. The Thing is He's Back but There's Still

**Where the Shadows Meet the Sea**

 **Chapter 3**

 **The Thing is He's Back but There's Still a Prophecy**

 **Annabeth**

Jason had taken Percy below into the room that had served as his own before… _Before_ , because there would always be 'before Tartarus' and 'after Tartarus'. Annabeth honestly didn't know how she had been so foolish in her hopes of finding Percy to never have even considered what he would be like _after_. The thought was dismissed as Jason rested a hand on her inner elbow.

"He's resting. Coach Hedge is going to try some nature magic to help with his wounds."

"I'll join him." Calypso nodded to Reyna before slipping into the room.

"It's probably better we give them a little bit of space."

Annabeth swallowed and nodded. Her hand came to rest over his and gave it a brief squeeze. When she looked up, his blue eyes were focussed on her but she didn't feel the need to say anything or to explain the million things that were running through her mind. And Jason didn't ask that of her. Instead, he gave her a moment to stand there in peace. She suspected, too, that he'd given her a choice she wasn't positive that she had— to stay out in the hallway. To let the others take care of Percy for a moment (when there was nothing she could do).

The moment was broken when Hazel stormed down the hallway towards them.

Annabeth can feel the dark aura emanating off of her. Frank was hot on her heels but he doesn't look like he's exactly going to stop her, but he also didn't have his brows and jaw set with the sort of determination she did.

Jason dropped his hand from her arm and stood tall. He might not be a member of the legion or the Roman camp any more, but there were mannerisms she was sure that he would never lose. He lifted a hand palm outwards in the silent gesture to stop. "He's unconscious. Calypso and Hedge are doing everything they can for him. When he wakes up we can question him."

"If it was Thalia, would you wait?"

Annabeth had never seen anyone pool shadows around them in the way that Nico did and whilst it wasn't quite that, there was a dangerous edge to her voice and her words. The air around her crackled with energy, not at all like Jason's lightning. _Magic,_ Annabeth realized. If she weren't already so exhausted from the fight with Clytius, the daughter of Athena didn't want to imagine what she would do to get at Percy.

"He's my _brother_ , Jason. If It weren't for him… if it weren't for him I wouldn't be here."

"I know. Believe me, I know, Hazel. But you saw him— he's not in any shape to answer any of our questions."

"He didn't even look like himself. I didn't recognize him." Annabeth added, her voice barely a whisper as she wrapped her arms around herself.

"He had Nico's sword."

"I know."

"How is Nico supposed to protect himself without his sword?"

Annabeth watched as the daughter of Pluto's legs went out from under her. Frank caught her just in time to keep her knees from hitting the floor. The daughter of Athena turned to Jason as tears sprung from her own eyes. As her shoulders heaved, Jason wrapped her in his arms and for a moment she let herself break down.

There wouldn't be time later.

When Calypso finally emerged it was the first time that Annabeth could say she had seen the goddess look tired. That, and she nursed a healthy number of claw marks up along her arms. Her hair, normally immaculate in the french braid that hung over her shoulder was beginning to pull out of its plaits and her eyes were just a little less bright. She glanced down upon seeing Annabeth staring and with a few notes hummed her arms appeared immaculate once more. "The good news is that he's going to make it."

Tension she wasn't even aware she had been carrying released from her shoulders and Annabeth let out a sign of relief. Her arms wrapped around Jason and she hugged him tight. When she pulled back, she shared a brief smile with him, and then turned back to Calypso.

"Thank you so much. Honestly, I can't even begin to thank you—"

"Before you thank me, let me finish."

"Will he wake up?" Hazel beat her to the punch. As concerned as she was about her brother, the daughter of Pluto was also kind and whatever conflict she was feeling in the moment, she was not cruel.

"Yes—" Annabeth's knees feel weak as she continued. "What you need to understand is that Tartarus wasn't made for demigods. And I don't mean that in a 'it's ill advised you go there' sort of way. I mean your bodies weren't made to withstand it. It's taken a toll on him. Frankly, I'm not sure how the atmosphere didn't melt the skin from his bones—"

Annabeth clapped a hand over her mouth.

"—and coming back wasn't any less of a strain. It would be challenging if he were in prime condition and frankly he's not."

"But you said he would wake up." Jason spoke because Annabeth's voice was locked somewhere in her chest. She squeezed his hand in thanks and watched Calypso for even the smallest gesture that her words were meant to soothe like her songs and masked the truth of the situation.

"He's malnourished. Whatever they were doing to keep themselves alive, well, it worked, but Percy _isn't_ well. There's no telling what the long term effects will be… physically or psychologically."

"He's strong." Annabeth whispered but she wasn't sure if anyone could hear the words.

"Then there are the wounds— varying ages, varying stages of healing. So far as I can tell he's been bitten by empousai, hellhounds, stabbed, scratched, and very likely cursed. The worst of it, though, is his shoulder."

She didn't need to close her eyes to picture the way it had hung at his side even as Percy ducked and dodged, engaging the monsters in the Necromanteion. It had not slowed him down.

"Some of the muscles were _removed_."

"W-what do you mean?" Annabeth finally whispered. "Removed?"

Frank shared a look with Jason. The son of Mars looked green and not in a I'm-turning-reptilian sort of way.

"What do you mean removed?"

"There are many things in Tartarus that eat flesh. Most of them are monsters… and some of them simply enjoy the taste. The extraction was… clean…"

"You mean someone cut him like—"

"Like a fillet." Coach Hedge appeared from the bedroom into the hallway. His arms didn't boast the same red welts and scratches that Calypsos had. Perhaps as a satyr was able to charm the demon kitten. He lacked his normal bluster and gusto and from the way he was rubbing his hands, Annabeth was sure he had just sanitized them against.

 _Probably had to wash all the blood off._

"There was further damage after that, likely from another attack. It's a weak point. We cleaned it, applied a few layers of ambrosia and nectar directly to the wound. I've enchanted the bandages to remain sterile."

"It will heal but I'm afraid he'll never have full use of that arm ever again. Maybe if we had some children of Apollo here they might be able to think of something that we missed, but I think it's doubtful. I can't be certain if there is any sensation in the arm itself, or how much he might be able to move it, if at all."

"We tried pricking his fingertips but," Coach Hedge shrugged. "No luck."

"And the blood?" Hazel looked like she was going to choke on her tongue.

"Most of it wasn't his. But it wasn't a demigod's either."

There are other things to think about. Annabeth knew this. Percy won't wake up any time soon and they need to figure out what to do about the Athena Parthenos. The statue needed to be returned to Camp Half Blood before a war can begin between the Greek and Roman camps. The size and weight of her didn't exactly make moving her an easy task. _But what if he does wake up and I'm not there?_ At the very least she should see him. Then she can join the planning.

"Can I go in?"

Calypso and Coach Hedge nodded. The daughter of Athena ignored the looks they gave her and focussed on putting one foot in front of the other. Jason released her hand and she hovered in the doorway for a moment to steel herself. Frank, Hazel and the others were forgotten as she took a breath and dared to glance in. She just needed a moment and she was glad that Hazel didn't follow after her making a scene to wake the other boy up, though if the situation was reversed she knew herself well enough to know that not even the dead could keep Annabeth from prying answers out of Nico. It's not like she was blind to her own hypocrisy but there was also nothing she could do about it as her fingernails bit into the wood frame of the door and she snuck a look.

Percy laid scrubbed free of the blood and covered with blankets. His cheekbones were sharp, prominent in a way they had never been before. Percy had always had thick dark eyelashes and they fanned across his cheek in his slumber but they stood out more prominently because he was pale to the point of being sickly. Not quite grey and not quite green, but his tanned skin was sallow. The spartus was curled up by his head, tiny chin resting on the son of the sea's ear.

From where she stood Annabeth could see Percy shivering and quickly crossed the room to pick up another quilt and lay it over him. They'd removed his shirt because it was covered with grit and grime and hadn't bothered with another, probably in part because of the special bandages they had wrapped around his shoulder. Where Percy's collarbone protruded it was so sharp and exposed, she could have filled the hollow of the skin with something and drank from it. A chill ran up her spine.

"What happened to you, seaweed brain?" Annabeth tucked the quilt tightly around him along the length of his body in an attempt to preserve some of his warmth. She lifted a hand and carefully brushed a few strands of his black hair out of his face (aware the whole time that the empty black eyesockets of the spartus was watching her).

A knock rapped just outside the door and when she looked up Jason's blue eyes met hers, his head popped around the corner.

"We need to decide what to do with the Athena Parthenos."

She turned back to Percy and swallowed. What did it say she was glad for the escape?

"I'm coming."

"She needs to be returned to the Greeks. You said you dreamed it, Annabeth."

"I did. My mother spoke to me. She said that the Roman needed to bring her back to Camp." Grey eyes landed on Reyna. "You were there. Not Hazel or Frank or Jason but you, Reyna. You may not be part of the prophecy but you have a crucial role to play in ensuring peace between our camps."

"There is no guarantee that they will listen to me. I've broken our laws."

"Caesar broke Roman laws."

"Sometimes a great leader has to think outside the box." Leo added.

The praetor didn't look convinced with her arms folded across her chest, but she also did not argue against the point. "I'm not denying that I should be the one to return her to your camp, but I think it is foolish to assume that peace will be so easy as returning even the most worthy of treasures."

Coach Hedge argued the point about bringing the statue with them to Athens. It was, after all, the giant's bane. The remainder agreed that time was precious, but that they couldn't afford a potential conflict between the two camps.

"We need a united front. If Gaea rises and demigods are too busy fighting demigods, we have no chance. We need to mend relationships because at the end of the day, we're all on the side that's against Gaea, right?" Piper spoke up, her voice sweet and bubbling butterflies in Annabeth's core. It wasn't the most obvious charmspeaking she had been on the receiving side of but the satyr didn't seem to realize what was happening as his shoulders relaxed and he began to nod along with them.

"So we're agreed then," Jason confirmed. "Reyna will take the statue back to Camp Half Blood."

Annabeth plucked grass from the ground and blew it back out across the landscape and away from her palm. She couldn't sit still no matter how important the meeting was and even though Piper had laid out everyone's favorite sandwiches and snacks her stomach didn't feel quite her own. "One small problem, though… how is she going to get the statue back to camp?"

"If we turn around we'll never make it back to Athens in time," Jason agreed. He surveyed the group looking for suggestions.

"I could help her." The goddess piped up drawing the eyes of each of them onto her.

"How? No offense, Calypso, you did an amazing job helping us before but unless you can turn into a dragon and fly the statue back at light speed I'm not really sure how you're going to be able to do a whole lot." Piper said bluntly.

"I don't really see any other gods or goddesses coherent enough to offer us a hand, Piper." Annabeth shot the daughter of Aphrodite a look and the other girl shrank. "The least we can do is hear her out."

Calypso didn't let that stop her. If being trapped on an island for a thousand or so years forced to fall in love and lose her heart's desire every few decades hadn't totally messed her up or given her a massive case of social anxiety then Annabeth was pretty sure the goddess could do anything. The goddess sat up straighter when Reyna gave her a nod to continue. Even without discussing it the praetor had found herself at the head of their circle with everyone else filling in around her. "There's a dock not too far away. Docks have boats. And I can control winds… we could sail back to camp. It would take me a fraction of the time it would take any of you. And although I wasn't in the good books with the Olympians," she said with a wave of her hand, "the other divine beings of the sea are my friends. We would be safe."

"So you're suggesting that we steal someone's boat?" Leo asked for clarification.

"I mean, I hadn't thought about logis—"

"Which one of us gets to steal the boat? It's me, isn't it? " From the impish grin that was tugging at his features, it was clear he was on board.

"I don't know that stealing is—"

"It's totally me." Leo confirmed.

No one had any better ideas. In the end they decided that Coach Hedge should go along with them. It was not only the optimal number of people but he was a certified protector and neither Reyna nor Calypso belonged at the camp. There was no guarantee that the Greeks would listen to them, even with the Athena Parthenos in tow. When evening fell, Leo would hot wire the biggest privately owned boat. He took more pleasure in scoping out the yachts than was strictly necessary. Grand theft wasn't normally allowed (although the occasional petty theft for food or clothes seemed a small matter when saving lives) but mortals would have to forgive them this once. It was for the greater good, after all.

Annabeth had been more hesitant in agreeing both Calypso _and_ the satyr should go given Percy's condition but when she'd voiced her concern Reyna had helpfully enquired: what other choice was there? Everyone else was needed to fulfill the prophecy.

"Thank you." Annabeth wrapped her arms around Calypso as the goddess. "Honestly, without you, I don't know how any of this would be possible. And Percy—"

"Please, I should be thanking you." Her almond eyes crinkled at the edges and a mischievous grin tugged at her lips. "I have to admit, I had hoped you'd be uglier. But you're beautiful and ruthless—"

"I'm sorry about lying to you—

"—No, don't apologize. Without you I would be imprisoned in paradise. Do you know how frustrating it is to be in hell but also have it be heaven? It'd almost be more tolerable if it'd been _disgusting_! What I was trying to say is, I can see why he couldn't stay while he had you waiting for him."

When she finishes, Annabeth can't help but think there is more left on the tip of her tongue. From the way she chewed on her bottom lip and dropped her eyes to the side, the demigod waits. When she doesn't, she bumps the goddess with her elbow.

"Spill."

Calypso opened her mouth and then closed it again. After a second of scrunching up her brows she finally reached out with a handful of drachmas and handed them to Annabeth. "It's nothing… but if you need me, Iris message. Any time day or night. If you need _anything_ , just call."

Her fingers closed around the coins and slipped them into her pocket with a 'thank you'.

The satyr, daughter of Bellona, and goddess waved them goodbye from the massive yacht. The Athena Parthenos looked briefly like it was reclining on a cruise ship ready to enjoy some time at sea. Of course, Leo had strapped the thing to high heavens to ensure it wouldn't fall off. Coach Hedge had then enchanted it. Calypso didn't seem the least bit concerned with the ancient artifact being tressed up like it was so Annabeth figured it wasn't worth worrying about.

"Be careful!" She called to them.

"Where's the fun in that?" Calypso waved and with a few beautiful melodies the engine started and the boat sped away throwing water as it rocketed away.

"You did it."

Annabeth turned to face Jason as he came to stand beside her.

"What? Accidentally get blown away and bring back a Roman and a goddess?" She snorted. "It could have happened to any unfortunate soul."

He laughed and shook his head. His blonde hair was beginning to grow out and fell across his forehead. "No, I meant the Athena Parthenos. You got it back and it's on it's way to camp. _You_ made that happen."

She turned away back towards the horizon where the stars were beginning to come out and shrugged.

"It doesn't feel like enough."

"Percy is a fighter. He _made it_ back. Gods only knows what he saw or what he went through but he made it back and _you_ were there just like he needed you to be."

"I don't _feel_ like I've done enough. I just have this feeling, this knot in the pit of my stomach, like it's not quite over. He's back but I won't be sure he's _back_ until he wakes up." With that she sighed and brushed a few blonde strands behind her ear. "Speaking of waking back up, I'm exhausted."

"We should get some sleep. I have a feeling that it'll be awhile before we get any more."

"I didn't know clairvoyance was a child of Jupiter power."

Jason's brows knit in confusion

She flashed Jason a smile and he laughed as he rolled his eyes at himself.


	4. A Few Moments

**Where the Shadows Meet the Sea**

Chapter 4

 **A Few Moments That Feel Like Time Can't Touch Them**

Percy

* * *

 _And what of him my lord?_

 _What about him?_

 _Without his sacrifice, the other would not have made it._

 _Demigods perish as often as they are born, and many times even before that. This is not new to us. What is the difference between one and another?_

 _His oath… there are few that have ever been so pure. And in it… so much power. It is the one of the prophecy, I am sure._

 _You're positive?_

 _Yes. The one fulfilling his destiny rested on the shoulders of the other. Without his sacrifice, the rest would not come to pass as it should. Your brothers' children were always meant to cross paths._

 _And what would you have me do?_

 _There was a time long ago when power and promise dawned new life._

 _That was long ago. The perils were much greater._

 _Were they?_

The voices float along the stream of darkness that Percy Jackson floats upon until the current draws him further away and the voices grow feint and disappear altogether. They are familiar but fleeting and he welcomes the silence as it consumes him.

When he opens his eyes he's floating in the ocean with the stars hanging high over his head. The waves lap against land somewhere in the distance and it whispers to itself with each gentle wave. Percy is lying on his back, arms and legs spread wide and he is weightless. He doesn't use any of his gifts, just floats, his body bobbing and for the first time nothing hurts and his muscles aren't tensed ready to kill or die trying at a moment's notice. Percy just floats. And he just breaths.

The sensation is strange.

 _Safe._

The word pops into his head and feels foreign. How long has it been since he's felt safe? He tries to cast his mind back but there is nothing to grasp onto but the sensation of the water against his skin and the soft light of the evening on his skin. He's weightless in the water and it's calming in a way that takes root deep inside of him.

The current carries him and he is an empty vessel thinking of nothing but the feel of the water under and around him until his fingers brush up against something else, soft. Familiar. There are fingers and they wrap around his own connecting their hands.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Nico's voice is soft, half heard from under the water (because depending on the waves they're above or below or somewhere in between). Percy closes his fingers around the other boy's keeping them together as they float. It settles something deep inside of him. Something he doesn't want to lose. Something that had been sleeping until that moment. Now that it is awake, he can't deny it.

"Don't let go," he insists.

"I won't."

Percy turns his head slightly to see the other boy softened by the moonlight. His dark hair floats around his head like a silver flecked halo and his cobalt eyes are like the night sky itself reflecting the stars. The dark of his clothes is lost amongst the inky water but his arms and hands and face and neck are pale, amplified by the stars. Nico doesn't turn to meet his gaze but he's sure the other can see him out of the corner of his eye. Placated by the other's answer, he settles back.

"It's peaceful," Percy finally says. "Calm."

"It is."

The silence settles between them and for a time they drift.

Neither lets go.

"Where are we?" Percy finally dares to speak, his voice soft, but it still sounds loud in the endless silence that surrounds them. They'd washed up near the shore of a white sand beach stretching as far as they could see. He had sat down with his feet just in reach of the waves so they could rush to meet him before retreating back once more and Nico sat next to him. Being wet didn't bother him and he didn't attempt to dry himself off and the other demigod hadn't asked either.

"I don't know."

"Should we be worried?"

"Probably." But Nico's tone isn't and Percy can't say that he blames him. He's not worried either. Not sat on the beach with the full moon hanging low in the sky overhead and a hundred different constellations gazing down at them. After a moment, Nico continues. "I feel like this is a gift. I don't want to question it."

"I know." Percy answers, and after a time, he speaks up again. "It's strange seeing you older. Every time I look over, I keep expecting you to look fourteen again."

"Tell me about it. It's like the world's fastest growth spurt."

Nico lifts a hand to run over his cheeks and face as if feeling the differences. They're easily visible to Percy. His cheeks are higher, more prominent. Nico had never weighed much, but he'd still had a shadow of that childish roundness left to his face but now it's gone. Instead, Nico's jaw is angular and in a few more years (or maybe just one or two) it will be strong, Percy thinks. His eyebrows have always been dark and thick but the rest of his face seems to have grown into them as well as his ears.

"At least I skipped the squeaky cracking voice stage."

"It's not _that_ bad." Percy insisted.

"Please. Like you even heard yourself, Jackson."

"I sounded awful," Percy chuckles. "I'm glad it didn't last longer than the summer, but Clarisse was a massive pain."

The curly mop of dark hair hasn't gone but the moonlight catches a few silver strands throughout like someone had brushed Nico's hair with streaks of shooting stars. There's the scar, of course, prominent from where the lycanthrope had swiped at his face (that thought burns somewhere deep inside him but he can't quite place it) and it cuts through the demigod's left eyebrow and curves to the hollow of his cheek. It doesn't distract him from the way that Nico smiles at him, or how it curves a little more cautiously as he thinks before he finally speaks.

"Is it bad?" Nico asks of the scar and Percy knows he's been caught staring so he meets the other teen's gaze and shakes his head, honestly.

"No."

"Do I look how you thought?" The son of Hades asks and from the look on his face he's hoping for complete honesty, even if his dark eyes are gazing out from under a mess of sea swept ringlets.

"No." Percy's answer is quick and he can see the second that Nico's shoulders slouch just a little. He reaches forward and brushes a few strands of the other's hair behind his ear and grins. "I definitely didn't think you'd be taller than me."

Nico falls backwards, his hands holding his stomach. His laughter is like the rusty hinges on a door to a forgotten room, creaky and out of use, but the longer he laughs the more familiar it sounds (like he's finding it all over again). Percys turns to face him, resting his chin on one knee with the other leg folded around. Part of him wants to ask why Nico finds it so funny — and part of him is well aware that he's not exactly the tallest of male demigods his age — but a bigger part of him wants to keep listening to Nico's laugh for as long as it lasts.

"You're ridiculous." When he finally catches his breath, Nico rubs the tears from his face with the backs of his hands because the palms are littered with damp sand.

"It's one of my more charming qualities." Percy flashes him a smile and they both laugh again.

The stars overhead shine and there is a gentle breezing carrying the scent of the sea and Percy inhales deeply taking in the fresh scent. _It's the small things_ , he thinks. _The things we forget to enjoy._ The ones he forgets to notice. Like the scent of the sea or the feel of a cool breeze against his skin. Like the feel of damp sand between his toes and fingers. Like a clear night with the sky expanding forever above them with the stars and the moon watching over them. Like the sound of Nico's laughter or the way he plays with the sand, picking up handful after handful only to drop it once more. Each time is closer to where Percy's hand rests in the sand until finally their fingers brush.

Percy slips his fingers between Nico's and closes them.

It's the small things, like the way he is not alone.

The way the damp sand feels between his skin and Nico's.

Or the way Nico doesn't hesitate nearly as much when he smiles back at Percy.

"Percy—"

The voice is close enough to his ear that he can feel breath and it tickles the hairs on his neck. Whatever time it is, there's not light playing across the backs of his eyelids so he's certain it's too early for them to wake up. They have hours still if the dusky color of his closed eyes is anything to go by.

"It's early," he insists, reluctant to wake.

Percy's face rests on one arm but he reaches out with the other attempting to find the other. When he does, it's the crook of an elbow behind him and he attempts to pull the other closer. Where there was warmth pressed to his back there is now a chill running up his spine.

"Percy—"

"We don't have to wake up yet, Nico," he whined. "The tide's out and when it comes back I'll keep us dry. When was the last time we just _slept_? I'm so tired…"

"Percy, you need to get up." There's an urgency to Nico's voice that crawls under his skin and has Percy pushing himself up at the sound (he's using both hands — that doesn't seem right but the thought is slippery and falls from his grasp as he focuses on Nico and finally prying open his eyes). It takes a moment to orient himself, the blood rushing to his head, and he turns to face the other. They're less than a hand's width apart and Nico's eyes are wide, dark and staring off in the distance over Percy's shoulder.

It takes a moment for his bleary eyes to focus as he turns his head to follow Nico's gaze but when it does his stomach drops. The soft silver sands and stars above are gone, replaced with the banks of a riverbed spanning in either direction. Needles, shards of broken glass, rusted metal pieces stab into his palm and when he lifts it up he's bleeding and many of the pieces have embedded themselves there. He uses the other hand to pluck them out, dropping them to the ground. The soft moonlight and stars are a world away because they're sitting on the banks of a river of blood in Tartarus and with each inhale of the acrid air, his lungs feel a little heavier. Every breath is an effort as his body works against him.

Hope dies at the sight of the other boy's expression.

"How did we get here?" He asks but Nico's look is still far away.

"You're not really here."

"What do you mean?" But try as he may, he can't get Nico to look directly at him.

"This isn't real. You're not here."

"Of course I am. I'm stood _right here_!" Percy growls as he pushes himself to his feet and reaches down to yank Nico up with him. The other demigod feels like air and once he's stood, Nico's dark eyes finally meet his own. Dark curls fall across them and he badly needs a haircut, but it mostly hides the welt of a wound caused by the lycanthrope down the side of his face.

It will scar.

Just like Percy's back and his sides and his neck and his shoulder.

 _My shoulder?_ The thought is heavy. It feels like slow moving poison in his gut.

There's a sadness in Nico's eyes as he reaches up and touches Percy's cheek but other than a chill to his cheek he can't feel it. Percy lifts his own hand to cover Nico's but his fingers find his own cheek.

"You're safe now," Nico whispers. "You aren't here."

Percy isn't sure if Nico is trying to reassure him or himself.

Percy opened his mouth to ask if the other boy had hit his head but he blinked. All he did was blink and when he opened them again Nico was gone (though he wasn't sure how he knew it because it was darker than night). Everything was dark. So black. He couldn't see a thing but he could still hear the whisper of a voice in his head telling him that he was safe. Percy's mind spun in confusion — how could he be safe if _Nico_ wasn't there? And where was he? Something was wrong. Something had happened, and it gnawed at his insides, an insatiable black hole determined to consume him. And Percy couldn't move and when he tried to remember he _couldn't_. His arms and his fingers and his toes wouldn't obey his commands to shift, to reach out, to find Nico (because if he could, the panic would quiet, and his heart would stop hammering).

Percy was frozen in place, paralyzed, and each noise in the darkness was magnified a thousandfold to his sensitive ears as he tried to decipher what danger waited him. What— or who— he would have to fight or kill next.

 _Something's here._

But where was Nico? Where was the other boy and why couldn't Percy move? He was alone and he couldn't move and his tongue felt thick in his mouth and his limbs wouldn't work. They might as well have been encased in cement for how responsive they were to his pleading. No matter how many times Percy blinked, his eyes didn't adjust to the darkness of his surroundings. His stomach crawled up the back of his throat.

Every second was one more that he was in danger and unable to defend himself, or another second that Nico might need him and he wasn't there.

Percy could feel them then, some moving, some closer than others. Six of them. Whatever _they_ were, he could feel the blood pumping through their veins. None of them felt like Nico, and he tried pressing further but found nothing of the other boy. Nothing that felt like that time on the cliff overlooking Chaos. Icy claws of panic sank deeper into his chest and punctured his heart.

 _The House of Night._

The thought was as rapid as his heartbeat.

 _Nyx. Friendship._

A board creaks and then another. There's an indistinct sound, a whispering or a buzzing, but he can't make any sense of it. It set the hairs on the back of his neck on end.

 _They found us._

Except that it wasn't an 'us' only a 'him'. It was just Percy, because he might not be alone, but he was on his own. His lungs screamed for air but he couldn't make them inhale— either because the muscles were frozen or because he was terrified of letting on whatever was in the room with him know that he was awake. He managed to force a few shallow breaths, hardly an intake at all, shallow and uneven. They did little to help his racing mind and the panic grew, festering in his chest like poison and each quick fire heartbeat forced it to spread throughout his body.

The whispering grew louder to a dull unintelligible hum and the end of the bed shifted, pressing under the weight of _something_ and Percy Jackson was sure that in that moment, unable to move more than to blink, that his heart stopped beating. The weight on his chest grew, pressing harder and harder, like something was on top of him attempting to crush the little breathe he had from his lungs. A choked noise escaped him and a finger twitched, just barely, as he attempted to fight back against whatever it was that was so desperate to kill him while he couldn't fight back. Another finger twitched on one arm but the other was heavy against his chest, unmoving to any of his commands.

The temperature in the room dropped, the panic growing.

 _Can't breathe… can't breathe…_

A tear slipped from the corner of his eye with the struggle for breath as his windpipe felt like it was being crushed under the weight of something formless and his chest was being caved in. The tiny inhale he managed was barely a taste but it kept him from passing out as the dizziness grew.

 _Help._

Percy silently cried out for Nico. He wasn't conscious of doing it, but in his teetering between consciousness and oblivious, the temperature in the air dropped. The humidity in the air pooled together until it materialized in frost that spread from his room across the floor and outwards. All at once sensation returned to his muscles and as if all the commands to _move_ had bottlenecked somewhere around the base of his skull only to course through his body all at once, his body shot upright and his lungs finally dragged breath after breath from the air. And the second that they had air the screaming began, clawing its way up from somewhere deep inside.

At the end of the bed Small Bob meowed at the other but Percy was clawing with his one hand at his neck and his chest as he tried to find the thing that had prevented him from breathing (they found nothing because there was nothing to find). His neck instinct was the find his sword and arm himself against whatever it was that lurked in the room with him, that made the whispering and humming noises. That had sat on the end off his bed. Whatever had captured him and held him down and taken Nico away from him. Hands smacked at the quilt and the bed attempting to find the cool metal that must rest at his side but Percy was blind and it was nowhere to be found.

He was unarmed.

Vulnerable.

The dark gave way to light and for a moment he was blinded.

Percy's arm came up to try to shield his eyes as they watered, the light blinding even against the backs of his eyelids. When he opened them he was met with faceless shadows lurking against the wall of an overly lit room with walls that threatened to close in on him. He might not have had his sword but each of their exhales were a fog of frost as the temperature dropped further, humidity turning to ice across the floor.

Percy didn't wait for them to move.

He threw himself at the shadows because he'd rather die fighting than lay cowering.


	5. Not All Answers Are Spoken

**Where the Shadows Meet the Sea**

Chapter 5

 **Not All Answers Are Spoken (And Not All Answers are Good Answers)**

Hazel

* * *

No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't shut her mind off long enough to get to sleep. Fighting Clytius, even with the help of Hecate, had been one of the hardest things the daughter of Pluto had ever done. Hazel was so exhausted that her eyes hurt. Every part of her was sore down to the roots of her hair and her nails but no matter what way she tucked herself in her small bed on the _Argos II_ , she couldn't find a position that didn't leave her limbs restless and twitching.

With a sigh, she shoved the thin blanket off of her to the end of the bed.

Frank was keeping watch along with Leo meaning the others should be sleeping. As much as she wanted to talk to Frank, she also knew that he would want to fix it and right now there was nothing he could do. Heck, there wasn't anything _she_ could do. The answers she needed were with the son of Poseidon and when she had poked her head in earlier, he hadn't looked any better. Calypso and Coach Hedge might have done everything they could before they left but the boy looked like death warmed over. As desperate as she was to know what had happened to her brother, she hadn't been able to bring herself to try and wake the older boy.

 _Piper._

Her feet hit the floor and the wood felt chillier under her feet than she remembered. It was _almost_ nice compared to the sweltering humidity that had her golden hair sticking up every which way. She gathered the thick masses of her curls over the nape of her neck and tugged one of the hair band that the daughter of Aphrodite had given her. With the curls lifted away from her neck and shoulders, she could fan herself briefly and felt just a little less stifled in the heat. The ship was dark but she had more or less memorized the layout so with only her fingers to guide her along the wall she found herself at the daughter of Aphrodite's door and gave a gentle tap.

After a moment the door cracked open and light spilled into the hallway.

"Can't sleep?" Piper asked, leaning against the doorway.

"No. "

No matter how bad their last fight, the other girl didn't hesitate to step back and open the door wider as she motioned for Hazel to join her. Her normally braided hair was loose in waves around her shoulders and still slightly damp. Honestly, Hazel could use a shower herself to get some of the dust and grit off of her but even the thought of standing up long enough to get the cobwebs and debris out of her hair, let alone scrub clean her pores, felt like too much work. Maybe that was what she should suggest Leo work on next… instead of Buford the wonder table, an enchanted bath tub. That would be way more useful.

"Earth to Hazel," the daughter of love waved her hand in front of her friend.

 _Woah, you must be tired. Spacing out._

Without realizing it, Hazel had walked over to the bed and plopped herself down on the end. "Sorry." She shook her head and ran a hand over her face with a sigh. "I can't get to sleep. Frank's on watch with Leo and I don't want to," she wasn't really sure what. She didn't want to bother him? Didn't want to worry him? Didn't want to have to think about all the things she was trying not to think about? Didn't want him to try to comfort her when it was pointless? Didn't want to seem overly dramatic considering one of their friends was laying unconscious and another one wasn't dealing too well with a potentially-fatal-for-demigods-sort of wound? There were too many things that she didn't want and it made it impossible to arrive at the thing she _did_ want right then. The thing that she would need to help turn her mind off and let her get some much needed sleep. Her shoulders sagged under the weight of words she couldn't find.

Piper nodded and moved to sit across from her. Nimble fingers began to part her hair into sections. Kaleidoscope eyes trained on her and after a moment, she nodded, as if the look on Hazel's face was enough to confirm her suspicions. "You're heart sick," she answered softly.

"Excuse me."

"About Nico. Until you know what happened there's not anything any of us are going to be able to do. But Percy's unconscious and who knows when he's going to wake up."

"That's…" Hazel wasn't quite sure how to respond but she laughed and shook her head sadly, "not actually wrong."

Piper flashed her a sad smile as if it to say _it may not be for the same reasons, but you're not alone,_ and though it was probably improper, it made her feel less alone.

"You know, daughter of love and everything," Piper finally added, with a flourish of the hand not currently holding the plaited hair in place, dismissing whatever Hazel may have read on her face. The sorrow was replaced with a lighter tone, "I'm supposed to be ridiculously good at reading people. And what I'm reading right now," she said as she finished braiding one section of Hazel's hair and tied it off with an elastic, "is that this calls for a pint of Ben and Jerry's."

She blinked a few times but she could practically hear Piper gaping. When her gold eyes gazed back up and found Piper's mouth hanging open it was like a cartoon. Literally slack jawed.

Piper sputtered. "Oh, no, honey…. Just… let me introduce you to two men who are going to forever change your life."

Hazel was about to open her mouth to argue when the other girl grabbed her cornucopia and pulled out a pint of ice cream and no way was Hazel going to say no to _that_.

The daughter of Pluto fell backwards onto the bed, brain freeze cutting through her skull as she attempted to combat it by sticking her thumb to the roof of her mouth. "Ih huwth," she lisped around her thumb. After a moment, the icicle like tendrils shooting through her skull succumbed. It probably hadn't been the most clever idea to polish off two entire pints of ice cream between the two of them but she hadn't known that ice cream flavors like _that_ existed. Who knew Mr Ben and Mr Jerry had put tiny little chocolate animals in a wash of marshmallow and caramel swirls with flavored ice cream and all sorts? Or that frozen cookie dough could literally melt in your mouth like that?

"You shouldn't have eaten it so fast! It wasn't a race!" Piper laughed as she licked the spoon clean and went about attempting to get any last bits of melted sugary goodness from the cardboard container. In the end she gave up on the spoon and licked the cover in what would have absolutely mortified any of the sisters from her old school.

"It sort of is when it's melting faster than you can eat it. Seriously— how is it even _hotter_ in here at night?"

"Leo needs to do something about adding air conditioning. Honestly, how can anyone expect us to defeat Gaea if we're drooping from heat stroke? I'm _sweating_ while I sleep. I shouldn't need to shower when I wake up because I look like I've done a three hours workout before I've even pulled myself from bed. There's _nothing_ okay about that."

Hazel's sides hurt and she hiccuped from laughter. It was silly, stupid and light, but it was exactly what the thirteen year old needed— to be distracted. To not think for a little while. She pulled herself back up to a sitting position and grabbed one of the pillows on Piper's bed and hugged it to her.

"Thanks, Piper. I really needed this."

The other girl rolled her eyes and tossed the two containers into the tiny bin that acted as a makeshift trash. They never brought the bins out and yet they mysteriously emptied when no one was looking. She'd have to ask Leo about that.

"You don't have to—" but Piper never finished the thought. As she spoke Hazel could feel the drop in temperature. It was instantaneous and as the other girl spoke her words came out in a puff of condensation that began to freeze the second her breath hit the air.

"What the—"

Topaz eyes locked with Piper's as the quiet of the ship was cut through with the sort of scream that froze her blood in her veins.

It sounded like someone be murdered.

"Percy." They both said at the same time. Hazel bolted from the bed and already had her fingers wrapped around the doorknob before Piper had even stood up.

"Should we wake Annabeth?"

"I think everyone's going to have heard that."

They skidded out into the hallway and switched on one of the lights illuminating the otherwise dark underbelly of the ship. Frost crept down the hallway biting at their feet and the two girls looked at each other.

"Are we under attack?" Jason practically fell into the hallway, the second his sneakered foot hit the ice. It threw him off balance but he managed to catch himself with a gust of wind and righted himself. Electric eyes met hers and Hazel couldn't help but notice they were strained around the edges and a little dimmer. He was wounded but despite orders to stay in bed, he was one of the first to skid into the hallway. Jason turned towards the source of the noise, behind the door where Percy had been left sleeping. Calypso and Hedge had done much to heal him, including inducing him in some kind of magical healing coma to help the process, but the screams were like someone being ripped apart form the inside.

Her steps were careful across the ice speckled floor. It grew thicker the closer to his room they stepped.

Annabeth, wild eyed, bolted into the hallway, dagger in her hand. Frank and Leo soon joined from above. "What's happening?" Eventually, all their gazes fell to Percy's door.

"Do you think he's having a nightmare?" Frank asked.

"He might not know where he is. He might not…" Jason paused as he chose his words, "be himself. We don't know what happened to him down there."

"Them." Hazel said, like a reflex.

Jason nodded.

"You shouldn't be out of bed." Piper said over Hazel's shoulder as she came to stand next to her friend but Jason didn't even turn. She might have scolded him, too, especially for being so cold to Piper recently but there were bigger things to worry about.

 _Later_ , she promised herself. Piper had been a good friend to her when she needed it. _Later._

Hazel lifted her hand and wrapped it around the handle. It was freezing to the touch, and with each exhale, her breath froze in front of her own eyes. They met with Jason's blue ones and when he nodded his head, she turned the knob and pushed the door open. Her fingers immediately found the light switch and flooded the room with light; it was brighter than the hallway. Jason was the first to enter the room with Hazel right on his heels. Piper and Annabeth followed, with Frank and Leo on their heels.

There was a chill in the air and Hazel was sure it was emanating from Percy. The demigod was sat straight up, back rigid and his eyes were focussed somewhere far off in the distance. She wasn't sure what he was seeing but when he turned to face them, his green eyes might as well have been dead for all the life they had in them. They were wide, wild, and as he lifted a hand as if to shade himself from the harsh overhead light, he looked at them all in turn but Hazel was positive that he was seeing _through_ them to something else. It made her skin crawl.

 _At least the screaming stopped._

At the end of his bed, the demon kitten was pacing. In the back of his non-existent throat it made a wretched moaning noise that set the hairs on the back of her neck on end.

"Percy… are you okay?" Annabeth asked, her voice soft. Percy's head snapped towards the sound but his expression didn't soften.

His skin was pale, nearly as pale as the bandages that were used to wrap his damaged arm across his chest. But there were red scratches, streaked across his throat and the exposed flesh of his chest. Hazel realized that in his panic he must have clawed at himself. As Annabeth began to move forward, Hazel lifted a hand but missed grasping her arm.

"Annabeth— I don't think he's _seeing_ us."

But the blonde wasn't listening as she took another step forward. Her dagger had been sheathed at her side and she held both her hands out as if to show Percy that she was unarmed. "Percy, it's us. You're on board the _Argos II_."

Confusion clouded his face and for a second she thought that he was going to snap out of it. That maybe he had woken too quickly, or that he was caught in the last vestiges of a night terror and it had begun to melt away at the sight of his girlfriend.

The temperature dropped further and there was no doubt that Percy was doing it. His lips curled back into a snarl and he launched himself from the bed towards Annabeth. Hazel's hand jumped to cover her mouth as she screamed, the reaction automatic, shock and surprise. He would have collided with Annabeth if it weren't for Jason as he shot a gust of wind that threw the other boy across the room causing him to crash into the wall.

Annabeth was stood with her hands over her mouth and tears streaming from her eyes.

"Annabeth— get out of the way!" Jason shouted but she didn't so much as move or turn to acknowledge him. Her eyes were wide and frozen on Percy as the damaged boy pushed himself to his feet and shook his head, as if attempting to clear it after impact.

"Don't hurt him!" Annabeth pleaded finally as she turned to the others. "He doesn't know what he's doing. He's confused…" She turned back towards him, "Percy— Percy— you need to wake up." She clapped her hands together as if he might snap out of it if she could just be loud enough.

But the noise did nothing. Hazel could see the way his muscles were coiled, ready to pounce again. She was thankful that they'd taken the sword away from him but even without a weapon, even with pupils blown wide and an expression like he was seeing ghosts (she couldn't have said for certain, of course, that he wasn't), the daughter of Pluto was positive that Percy wouldn't stop until he'd injured someone. He didn't need a weapon.

He _was_ a weapon.

"If you hurt him, I'll kill you."

Jason's gaze jerked from Percy to Hazel at the other boy's words.

 _He's seeing things._

"We haven't hurt anyone, Percy. Please— you have to wake up."

His fingers brushed along the floor, touching the spiderwebs of ice and when he lifted his hand again, the pieces broke off of the ground and went flying at the group, shards of ice as projectiles. Hazel jumped out of the way but Annabeth was the closest and although she dropped to the ground the same as the others, when Hazel looked back up, she could see the girl bleeding through her fingers. The shaking of her shoulders was as much from a broken heart as it was from the pain of ice cutting through her skin, Hazel was sure. Her heart tugged for the other girl.

Heartsick, Piper had said.

That made three of them.

"He has no idea it's us. We need to snap him out of it."

Piper caught her eye and then Jason's. "Distract him for a minute." She then turned to Leo and Frank. "Get Annabeth out of here."

"What have you done with him!? I can't feel him…" Percy rambled, shouting from where he crouched in the corner. His eyes, normally green like the Mediterranean, were murky and drifting.

"Piper…" Hazel practically whispered.

 _She's afraid of using her charm-speak_ , Hazel realized. That's why she needed a minute. To build up to it. To convince herself that she could do it (Piper was practically shaking). But if there was ever a time for it, it was right then to help snap Percy out of whatever living nightmare he was trapped inside. Preferably before he accidentally hurt one of his friends.

 _What did they see down there?_ She briefly wondered as she sucked in a breath. Something had left the son of Poseidon broken— physically and emotionally.

The two boys moved to take the blonde, but the motion caught his eye. A chair to his right was soon in his hand and he smashed it against the floor breaking it into pieces. Annabeth practically jumped out of her skin as she rolled out of the way. With it broken, Percy was left with a jagged leg to brandish as a weapon in place of a storm.

 _If he were at full strength… I don't even want to know what he would be able to do._

They were on course towards Ithaca and that meant that they were currently flying over the ocean. If Percy reached out to it he could drown them all. Hazel felt a fire light in her gut at the thought. She had to protect her friends. That meant they needed to snap him out of it or incapacitate him.

Hazel lifted her hand and shot sparks towards him. They were harmless, a product of her magic, more for show than anything else. Percy swung at them with the chair leg, growling when they did nothing.

"We need to get that thing away from him." Jason nodded towards the chair leg.

"Yeah and the rest of it."

Jason nodded and with a bluster of wind, the decimated pieces of the former chair went skidding across the floor and out the door. That just left him with the hunk of wood he currently had in his hand. Percy didn't wait for either of them to figure out what to do next, he launched himself at them again swinging. Hazel managed to tuck and roll out of the way but the piece of wood came close enough that she could feel the wind from the swing tickle against her skin.

"I don't want to hurt you, buddy, but I'm going to have to if you don't put that thing down." Jason held both of his hands palm out and moved backwards slowly.

"Where is he?"

"Where's who?" Hazel asked, hoping to distract him.

The question appeared to throw him because he paused his pursuit of Jason to turn towards her. "Nico… You took him."

"Why do you think we took him?"

"He was— he was here. A minute ago he was here—" Percy shook his head as if attempting to clear the fog from his thoughts and waved to the space next to him. "He was here," he whispered but the words sound more confused the more he says. "We were sleeping."

"Where were you sleeping?"

"On a beac—"

Before Percy can finish the thought Jason sent a burst of lightning at the other boy. It was only a small one and when it hit Percy's wrist, his hand spasmed and the chair leg immediately clattered to the ground. His eyes watched as it fell unblinking, and he pulled his hand back to himself. Percy attempted to cradle it against his chest but he had no way to hold it because his other arm was already too damaged, and bandaged in a sling. His face was blank, his body unmoving, and she turned to tell Jason to wait. To stop. To give him a minute because he looked about as lifeless as the rag doll she had when she was a child, but it was too late. Jason was already in motion, dropped one shoulder as he rushed Percy and tackled the boy to the ground. Jason should have been able to overpower him easily— Percy was skeletal with his bones protruding— but he should have been in bed himself. Wounded, he was still strong, but the son of Jupiter was tiring quickly.

Hazel might have been embarrassed for him and fanned herself or averted her eyes if their lives hadn't been in danger. He was clad in nothing but a pair of shorts and she could have counted each of his ribs and every one of his bones. He struggled and spit and clawed but Jason had a good sixty or so pounds on him Percy had no hope of getting out from under him, especially with only one arm to fight the other boy off. Jason soon had it pinned to the ground.

Jason stilled, his face greying as his eyes bulged and raised to meet Hazel's in silent question. His mouth gaped and Hazel squeaked back, unable to make any noise. He felt _it_ , whatever it was.

Like the blood in her veins had stopped understanding what it was supposed to do. Like her heart sputtered and forgot how to beat. Her hand clawed at her chest as she begged it to beat, begged for her lungs to draw air into them once more.

 _Can't… breath. I can't breath._ Her thoughts grew more panicked as she attempted to force her lungs to intake breath but they didn't respond to her, not really, because they might have inflated but they took nothing from the air.

 _Percy?_

Hazel's vision blurred, fog creeping in around the edges.

"Percy, **stop**."

The charmspeak was so thick that Hazel herself itched to _stop_ , though she couldn't say what. Whatever had been squeezing at her heart and her lungs like a vice let go and the air came rushing back into her lungs and made Hazel dizzy. She slumped down on the floor coughing. Each intake of air had her head swimming, thankful for each breath.

"Percy, we're your _friends_. You wouldn't want to hurt your friends would you?"

"I wouldn't," he mumbled.

"But you are. You are hurting your friends. And you need to stop."

"I didn't… I didn't mean to."

Jason had fallen to the ground, rolled off him, and his body was wracked with coughs as his lungs filled themselves again and again. A hand pressed to his chest as if attempting to feel his heart and figure out what exactly had stopped it in the first place. Blue eyes were wide as they locked with hers and Hazel shrugged before glancing back at Percy. The boy was wide eyed and the confusion lifted itself like the sun burning away fog.

The demonic kitten mewled and rubbed against his leg. Percy glanced down at the kitten and moved to scoop it up in his hand, and held it against his chest. "Small Bob?" The kitten mewled back at him and crawled up on his good shoulder. The small thing butted its head against Percy's ear a few times, purring as his claws dug deeper into the boy's shoulder. It didn't seem to bother Percy.

"Hazel… Jason… where am I?" Percy asked as he looked up and his eyes finally _saw_.

"You're on the _Argos II_." Piper reached out for him and moved to lead him back to bed. "You gave us a little bit of a scare."

"Did I hurt anyone?" He asked as he sat down next to her.

"Nothing a little ambrosia won't cure." She murmured and ran her hand along the small of his back.

"How did I get here? Where's everyone else?"

"They're making sure we're on course for Ithaca. We're making a slight detour towards a rampaging goddess. You know, the usual Tuesday." Piper answered with an ease that Hazel didn't feel. He nodded his head, dark hair falling across his eyes.

"Nico wasn't here." He said as he turned to meet Piper's gaze.

"He wasn't with you."

"It was a dream," he whispered and dropped his head into his hand, his elbow rested on his knee.

"It was." She agreed.

For a moment, the boy was silent and Hazel couldn't blame him. She had needed a lot more than a minute when she had realized that her brother wasn't with Percy.

"Where's my sword?"

"You didn't have it. We checked your pockets, everything. It wasn't anywhere."

"The cavern… I had it in the cavern." Percy's voice was far away as if he were trying to discern between what was nightmare and what was reality. Hazel had a dark feeling that grew in the pit of her stomach, a feeling that there wouldn't be much difference.

"No, Percy, you had _Nico's_ sword."

"I want it back."

"Percy, your sword didn't make it back with you." Piper murmured, her hand gentle on his good shoulder. Hazel could feel the calm she poured into her voice, as if she were attempting to quiet a scared animal. One that might bight. Somehow, she didn't think this Percy was all that different.

"I need it back." His voice was desperate.

Percy lifted his hand to card through his hair and the light caught on metal around his finger. Something about that tugged at her insides. The son of Poseidon hadn't worn a ring when he was in New Rome. She was sure of that. Rings were usually adored with gemstones or made of precious metals and the one around his finger felt familiar.

"That sword was Nico's… Hazel should have it."

"I _need_ it back." He repeated, green eyes wide. "He gave it to me." Percy's hand shook as he ran it over his eyes and then through his hair once more. "He gave it to _me_." He pleaded.

The light caught metal of the ring once more. Hazel knew that ring anywhere. It was Nico's skull ring. Her heart squeezed in her chest and when the son of Poseidon lifted his gaze to meet her eyes, she didn't have to ask to know the thing he couldn't say.

Nico didn't make it back because he couldn't… and before he couldn't, het had given the son of the sea parts of himself to bring back.

"He loves you. He said to say… to say he was sorry."

Her brother was dead and Percy Jackson wasn't.


	6. You Know Things Have Gone Wrong When

**Where the Shadows Meet the Sea**

Chapter 6

 **You Know Things Have Gone Wrong When Leo's The Responsible One**

Leo

* * *

Two out of three was normally pretty good odds. Passing two out of three of his classes? Amazing! Two out of three of his inventions working the way he intended it to on the first try? His father must be smiling down on him! He got two out of three things finished that he'd planned on in a reasonable time frame? Kicking that ADHD's butt! People laughing at two out of three of his jokes? Well, there was no accounting for taste… but they were still pretty good odds, though. Two out of three was normally fantastic.

It was slightly only marginally sort of _less_ fantastic odds in the instance of going on a mission to reign in a super competitive goddess who was going massively berserk (and apparently no one could win the war without doing _something_ to fix the temporary personality disorder) where two out of three of the odds were definitely not in your favour. Item number of one definitely not in Leo's favor: on of his questing companions was less than stable himself. And item number two of definitely no in Leo's favor? They had exactly zero idea how they were supposed to incapacitate this rampaging schizophrenic victory goddess because until she was made to heel there was zero chance that either side was going to win the forthcoming war. Normally Leo was a big one for winging it— like his entire life was one episode of barely-masked-incompetence with a maybe-can-do attitude and a whole heft helping of epic-winging-it— but normally everyone else on the team was playing with a full deck.

So what was the one positive? On that particular day Leo was the voice of reason.

 _Crap-o-la, on second thought, that probably is three strikes and we're out._

The son of Hephaestus had laughed. Honestly when they gathered in the mess hall on the _Argos II_ with Buford the Wonder table's projection of Coach Hedge shouting to drop and give him twenty every five second Leo had thought they were joking (or maybe that he'd misheard things). They had to be joking because who in their right mind would honestly suggest that Percy I've-just-gotten-back-from-Tartarus-and-nearly-murdered-my-girlfriend-and-then-Hazel-and-Jason-in-some-apparent-fugue-state Jackson should honestly take part in a quest? And Percy looking-worse-for-wear Jackson could probably use a break, some physical therapy, and for everyone to just back off. So who would want either of those Percy's to go on a quest?

Annabeth.

The answer was Annabeth.

Annabeth… the one who was supposed to be like the voice of reason when the rest of them were going totally nuts. The one who was supposed to know what she was _actually_ doing when the rest of them were running around because the world was totally insane and just like on fire all of the time. She'd sort of been instrumental in living through one major war on behalf of the gods without getting everyone murdered. She was a seasoned demigoddess. She should have known better. That was probably why Leo had snorted; there had to have been motor oil in his ears because there was no way that the daughter of Athena was volunteering her traumatized boyfriend three seconds after he got back.

"The whole world is ending," Leo had groaned.

Annabeth hadn't looked too impressed with him (if by too impressed he meant that if her eyes had lasers he would have been a smoking pile of ash).

Leo was pretty sure that she must have hit her head during the whole night terror episode because a few wires had definitely gotten crossed in her brain. He wasn't a doctor and he didn't quite get people the way that he got machines, but honestly he would have given his left arm in that moment to be able to open up her gear box and take a look inside to try and figure out what in Hades she was thinking. Her grey eyes had been as hard as the metal they resembled.

"Jason's out." Piper had said without a second thought. "You're injured," he wasn't making eye contact with her still. The whole breakup on the _Argos II_ was making things super awkward. His skin was looking sort of grayish though he put on a strong face.

"I'm fine."

"That right there—" Leo had said, "is exactly why you're not coming. It's like a contest to see who's the most fine with you. You were impaled, dude. It's okay to take like **two** sick days. Seriously. None of us are going to judge you." The son of Jupiter hadn't bothered to argue with him. Neither had any of the others.

"So Jason is out… which is probably for the best. Jupiter isn't exactly know for being the most… relaxed of gods." Frank had chosen his words about the kind of gods very carefully, probably because he was worried the big guy would smite him on the spot. It seemed like the sort of thing he'd do.

"So let me get this straight…" Leo released the gadget he was working on in his tool belt to hold both his hands up as if to make his point, "Jason is out firstly because he's been impaled but is so stupidly heroic he has to make the rest of us look like crap. And _then_ he's not coming because he'll either wind up killing himself or of one of us. Sorry, dude, you know it's true. You wouldn't mean to but… when have you _not_ won first place?" Jason only looked slightly defeated. That could have been of the stab wound and not because his fatal flaw was being the most perfect specimen of a teenage boy Leo had ever seen (but was super less likely). "Annabeth can't come because even if she _tries_ not to compete she'll probably implode— don't look at me like that. You would." Leo went around the table. "Hazel, your dad doesn't care about my dad or Mars."

The daughter of Pluto shrugged. "I can't see any issues."

If no one else was going to see sense, he felt like he owed it to the son of Poseidon to try to find another way. The guy was sat there staring off into a corner looking some shade of green he might have mistaken for seasick if his dad weren't, well, Poseidon. He looked like one of those after photos of someone on drugs… which he totally wasn't but the guy was in a bad way. He didn't deserve to be chucked out onto a quest until he'd had like a day or ten to catch his breath.

"What about Aphrodite? I mean… does she even know he's alive? Does _he_ even know _she_ 's alive?"

The general consensus was that no, she didn't have any direct conflict with him. And, so far as everyone could tell, Hades or Pluto or whatever was pretty much immortal-eyes-only for Persephone besides the occasional mortal dalliance on either of their behalves. Like most of Leo's plans, though, it didn't exactly pan out. That was probably why he preferred to just wing it.

"Aphrodite is the epitome of competition." Annabeth had argued. As she spoke she glanced at Percy and slipped her hand over his where it rest on the table. The boy glanced down at it and then up and around before back off in the distance. She dropped her hand back to her lap before shooting a glance across the table at the daughter of Aphrodite. "And with Piper's charmspeak… I'd like to say that it could benefit the quest but if something happens and something goes wrong—"

Leo opened his mouth to tell the blonde where she could cram her opinions but before he could get the first sound passed his lips he had felt Piper's elbow as it ever so slowly began to work its way into his ribs. When he turned to look at her, she had shaken her head and briefly gave his leg a squeeze.

"Please don't," she had whispered.

"Fine," he'd muttered under his breath.

"This is way too important for maybes." Piper had said as she caught Leo's eye before looking at the others. It set his teeth on edge how she couldn't meet Annabeth's eye.

"He can't even use his other arm!" Leo burst out. He was just glad that he hadn't burst into flame. It was the twilight zone. Or it was opposite day. Like, nothing made sense.

"Guys—" Jason had stood up as if to put himself between them (not like the table wasn't already there) but he must have moved too quickly because he grasped at his still healing wound. Annabeth reached up and put a hand on his arm as if coaxing him to sit before she had turned back to Leo.

"And he won't need to!" She growled back at him. Leo was pretty sure that if he spoke again then the other girl was probably going to kick him under the table.

"Try telling that to the _goddess_ of victory we apparently need to defeat."

"Leo." Hazel's voice was low and he could tell from the gold gaze of her eyes that she was willing him to sit down. But he hadn't. Percy didn't even flinch or turn his gaze towards the rest of the group. Small Bob rested on the table near him and his eyeless gaze fixed on Leo.

"What? You're going to tell me that the rest of you are sat here thinking to yourselves that the goddess of victory is going to be all about exploiting weaknesses? He only has _one_ functional arm. And he's not exactly all here right now." Maybe the circular motion near his ear had been a bit OTT but he just hadn't understood how no one else was willing to stand up for the son of Poseidon. Dude had been through a lot… surely they could give him a few days to catch his breath.

"Leo." Annabeth growled, her fingernails dug hard into the top of the table. She probably left marks behind.

"Percy. Earth to Percy…" Leo snapped a few times in the other boy's direction but there was nothing.

"I can't guarantee that something won't go wrong, Leo." Piper said from beside him. "Right now it… it doesn't feel entirely under my control. Sometimes it feels like the charmspeak is using me instead of the other way around. I _can't_ go." Her voice was soft and weary and when he turned to her, the blue of the harpie feather standing out against the shades of brown and caramel of her hair, he had seen the impossibility that everyone else saw.

"It's not fair," Leo murmured as he sat back down though he wasn't sure if the words actually added up to anything. Everything felt too silent and heavy then. His hands disappeared back into his tool belt twisting one thing and screwing another, working with purpose but without thought. As his eyes canvassed the table everyone else dropped their gaze.

"So it's decided then." Annabeth said, her voice low. Her gaze canvassed the table as if looking for any other signs of dissent. "Frank and Hazel for the Romans and Leo and Percy for the Greeks." Annabeth had rested her hand on Percy's hand once more, turning to him as she spoke.

"Sorry, what?" Percy had asked as he turned his eyes from the corner they'd been burning a hole in for the last hour.

"A mission to defeat the goddess of victory."

"Why would we do that? Isn't victory what we're hoping for?" He had looked a lot more lost than hero-ish. Leo would have liked to say that he at least looked inquisitive but Percy was currently more hollow shell looking than he was teenage boy looking.

Annabeth sighed.

Leo's insides had felt like ice.

 _Yeah, absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong._

So naturally it did.

They arrived in Olympia without any trouble which, looking back on it, probably should have tipped them off. The four demigods set off early hoping to find the goddess and do whatever it was they needed to do (which, of course!, wasn't entirely clear) before the sun was too high in the sky. Even in the early morning it was already sweltering. Leo didn't want to think about what it would be like later in the afternoon. Annabeth hugged Percy and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek as he left. He offered a half smile but from the bags under his eyes, Leo didn't think the other boy had slept at all the night before. The skeletal kitten perched on Percy's shoulder felt like more than an omen than a sidekick.

They split up with Hazel and Frank in one direction leaving he and Percy to another. Olympia boasted a museum and it seemed like as good a place as any to search but no luck. _Well, if finding a murderous slash psychotic goddess could be considered luck_ , Leo thought. _Welcome to my life!_ The one good thing about the museum, though? Air-conditioning. While Hazel and Frank roasted outside, Leo basked in the glory of the divine man-made technology.

 _Sucks to be them. Well, except that Hazel would probably faint. Like… how up close and personal were they getting with genitals because that is some crazy detail._ Leo thought, followed by: _yeah, Hazel would definitely faint._

"There's nothing here." Leo announced, probably sadder than he should have sounded.

"We should go find the others. Maybe they've had more luck."

Leo barked a laugh. "Ah, yes. Because death defying quests are usually _very_ lucky." If Percy recognized it as sarcasm, the dude didn't blink.

"This place gives me the creeps." He swore he saw the son of Poseidon shiver then. Nothing about the museum was particularly off putting. Sure, it was dusty and generally deserted but it didn't give off any spooky vibes. Then again who knew what the teen had seen in Tartarus. Maybe there was a blue haired old woman monster who kept glancing up from her book trying to _shhhhh_ him to death like the woman at the front desk. Or maybe there were far too many statues of cattle and cows— like a _disturbing_ amount as there was in the museum. Who loved cows that much? Or maybe cow monsters in Tartarus? Leo didn't even want to think of what weird hybrid horrific creations they had down there. And Percy had lived it.

Percy gave one last look around the museum (which, in Leo's opinion, they could have totally investigated a little more thoroughly and definitely _not_ to take advantage of the A.C.) before exiting. Leo took a few more seconds to bask in the feeling of cold air blowing on his skin before he trudged back out into daylight.

"You know," he said to no one in particular, "I might be flame retardant but honestly it's hotter than Hephaestus' forge out here." It didn't take long for beads of sweat to gather on his forehead. Olympia was going to leave several demigods extra crispy if they stayed outside in the sunshine too long.

Percy was no where to be seen. Leo cursed under his breath as he looped around the town's square trying to find the son of Poseidon. _He had like a two-second head start. He couldn't have gotten that far._ But he couldn't see him anywhere in Olympia. Sure, it didn't help that there were dozens of tour buses but even as he ducked past each one and checked around it, still no sign of Percy or his demon cat sidekick. Leo felt it in his bones when he heard a loud crash. He might not have any idea what that metallic sound might have been but he also knew that it was one of his friends, most likely Percy. Without a second thought, Leo was off. He blew past Apollo's Jewelers and a number of cafes and shops with spinning racks of postcards outside barely missing people as he dodged in and out of them, his demigod senses tingling to life.

Even with only a few minute head start, somehow Percy had cleared a considerable distance from the museum towards a square covered in the shade of a few very large trees. _So much for not getting too far, Leo._ _At least Annabeth won't murder you for losing her boyfriend… you know, if you made it back._ He opened his mouth to call out to the other but stopped.

The square was littered with trash where a garbage can had been knocked over. A number of large rounded potted plants was smashed strewing soil and plant carcasses across the light cobbles of the street. What Leo expected to find was some monster taunting one of his friends. His palms itched, ready to burst into flame should he need to jump into action and save his friends. The only thing that appeared to need saving were the rest of the plants in the square because they were slowly withering, curling as if charred by the sun or the heat though they sat in the shade. Once crumpled to ash and then the next like the plague. _Or like the water's been sapped out of them._ The thought sent a chill up the back of Leo's spine, and not from the trail of sweat dripping down it.

"Don't you dare try to—"

Percy stood with his back to Leo, taunt muscles. His good arm was extended, not reaching for the stygian blade that rest in its sheath across his back, but not _not_ reaching for it either. The square was dotted with cafes and taverns for tourists to take shade, a few signs posting pictures of ice creams and popsicles. Gods only knew what the mortals would see when they looked at Percy reaching for a sword, sapping the life from the plants around him. The mist was helpful but it wasn't like it shielded anyone from seeing anything violent. Whatever was happening, Leo needed to intervene quickly. Before anyone got hurt (Percy included) and before things escalated. If there had been time, he might have bothered with an internal monologue of _I told you so_ and _not fair to ask the guy to come out here when he's clearly not ready to be back in the game_ but approached the shady square with caution.

Percy wasn't a big dude before Tartarus, but he was an even smaller one afterwards. Since he'd been back, he was more skeleton than mass of muscle as in he could turn sideways and nearly disappear. He was speaking, rushed and impassioned, agitated as he attempted to keep his voice low but sometimes lost control of his volume. Skittering across the light bricked floor of the shady square was a person. Leo couldn't get a good look at the other from where he stood but he knew that something wasn't right. It churned his gut because for all he was curious, he was pretty sure the older demigod was having some kind of breakdown (and not the talking to ghosts or visions kind which probably would have been easier to handle). Leo had been in foster homes with kids with complex trauma… it wasn't pretty. And it wasn't like Leo was qualified to help bring the guy back from the brink if his mind snapped or something.

 _Calm down, Leo. First things first… you need to keep him from stabbing the mortal. Then you worry about the stupid quest._

As Percy drew nearer, the homeless woman (because Leo could about make out that she was a she despite Percy blocking his view) picked up another one of the massive rounded clay pots and threw it in the boy's direction. Percy ducked out of the way which was just as well, Leo was pretty sure he would have been out for the count had the thing knocked his head. Unfortunately, it just grazed his bad shoulder and the demigod teen let out a snarl. The pot shattered on the ground just behind Percy's feet. Leo's legs carried him forward before he knew what was happening. The last thing he wanted was to shock or frighten the other boy but unfortunately, Percy wasn't having it out with a building or a ghost. He was having it out with a mortal woman, paler and even thinner than Percy.

"Percy!"

Shouting the boy's name had no reaction. The homeless woman skittered back further across the pale ground. Her clothes were tattered, scarcely more than rags. Her hands were gnarled and filthy, fingernails long and curled.

"You cannot do this alone." The woman spoke, her voice reedy and nasal.

 _Great. The homeless lady is a crackpot and she's triggering him. Because things can't possibly get any worse._

Wrong. The homeless woman managed to crawl back to her feet. Percy approaching was backing her into a shady area set out with tables and chairs, the out door area for a nearby cafe. The woman managed to put a table and a chair between them. Percy threw one over and it clattered to the ground. The woman reached out as if to touch him and Leo was positive that the other boy was going to take out his stygian blade. Riptide might not have hurt a mortal but Nico's blade? Leo wasn't sure.

"Don't you _dare_ touch me, you filthy—"

Leo did possibly the dumbest and most clever thing he'd ever done in his life: he ran straight at Percy Jackson and took the guy out at the knees. They wound up in a mess of scraped limbs and bumped heads. As they fell to the ground, Percy was already swinging out to hit him trying to connect an elbow with his face or some soft part of his body. Leo, however, was both small and quick. He managed to avoid any heavy blow. Being especially talented at fidgeting and flailing, as it turned out, was secretly a strength.

"Percy, dude, calm down."

"You don't understand! That thing—"

"She's not a _thing_. She's a woman. Filthy, sure, but she's still a lady."

"She's not." Leo didn't think he'd ever seen a look so dark across Percy's face before; Percy's lip was curled back in a sneer as he lashed out again at Leo but this time trying to get the younger boy off of him with one arm since the other was still strapped around his chest. Leo scrabbling and managed to untangle himself from the sea prince. Whatever Percy was seeing, Leo was pretty sure it wasn't him so he ducked and dodged another swing or two before he finally managed to get away.

The son of Poseidon was breathing hard. He sat up, looked at his scraped elbow and then Leo. From the way he blinked and glanced around, Leo thought that he was back in the present. Whatever ghosts he'd been seeing were gone for the moment.

"We need to get going. I'm pretty sure those sirens are for us…" Leo said, bouncing onto the balls of his feet. Down side to having super ramped up attention and energy for battle situations? It didn't just fizzle out once the moment was over. He glanced back to the homeless woman but she was gone. _Probably for the best._

"You don't understand who she is or what she's done." Percy grumbled as he pushed himself to his feet.

"Maybe not. But what I do understand is that we've drawn a lot of attention to ourselves and we need to get the hell out of dodge." A crowd was gathering, pointing and murmuring at them where they stood. Who knew what the mix of tourists and locals saw— probably some teenagers trying to cage match bums or something. Leo watched as Percy glanced around, realizing that mess they'd made and property he and the woman had damaged.

"Yeah… okay."

Leo and Percy ran from the sound of sirens (and hopefully to find their friends).

Leo wasn't entirely sure what to make of the mission. In the end, they'd managed to subdue and capture Nike thanks to what he chalked up as a lot of good luck, or a series of generally small disasters that somehow worked in their favor. They'd expected a wigged out goddess and that was exactly what Leo, Percy, Hazel and Frank got. It just so happened that they also had one wigged out son of Poseidon on their hands, too.

"Was that… a sock in her mouth?" Piper asked, arching an eyebrow at him. "With duct tape?"

"A _dirty_ sock." Leo corrected. He ran a hand through his sweat and dust crusted hair. Cleanliness and quests didn't exactly go hand in hand but even he had to admit that he was ripe. He totally needed a shower.

"So how was it?" Piper's arms were crossed in front of her chest. Leo didn't believe for a second that she was cold. Sometimes, he thought, she tried to make herself occupy less space. To be less in the way. Like since her charmspeak had started to go nuts and it was somehow bigger than herself, she was desperate to combat that by being small. Leo didn't like the change.

"Honestly?"

"Always."

Leo motioned for her to follow him into his room and shut the door behind them. The _Argos II_ wasn't exactly the most soundproof of places but walls between them was better than talking openly in the halls. So he told her; about searching through Olympia, the museum, the homeless woman, running from the sirens, the way Percy struggled to keep his breath probably because his lungs were like swiss cheese since coming back from Tartarus, how they'd found Frank and Hazel once more along with the super sonic pony— and wasn't Arion like technically Percy's half-brother? Which was totally weird because he was a horse but then again Percy's other half-brother was a cyclops anyway— and how they had eventually found Nike by promoting their love of Adidas and Puma.

"A homeless woman? As in… he was fighting with a mortal?"

"I thought so. But then something strange happened."

Piper sat on the edge of his bed and watched him, the blue harpie feather in her hair twisting and turning as if it were dancing in a breeze the rest of her hair couldn't feel. There wasn't anything questioning in her look. Nothing that asked why he was telling _her_ this instead of Annabeth or one of the others. Leo's fingers fidgeted inside of his utility belt, tugging on wires, fastening a screw, working on something mindlessly. They were usually guided more by intuition than by any conscious effort on Leo's part.

"She wanted us to fight one another to the death."

Piper nodded. "When _don't_ the gods want us to fight to the death?"

Leo didn't respond at first, not because it wasn't true but because he was trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say next. For a moment he hovered somewhere near the end of the bed and his bureau. The room was mostly covered in odds and ends, tools, half made things they might need later. Piper was occupying the sole spot that was safe for someone to rest.

"Leo?"

"We had a plan." He finally said. Leo had never been good at the whole people thing or the reflective emotional sort of thing, but even as he said just those four words he could see Hazel and the mess of a labrynth she'd brought to the surface to protect them. He could see Hazel and Frank running in one direction while he and Percy took another. The golden Nikettes with their murderous automaton gadgets closing in on them when the demigods refused to do as Nike/Victoria commanded. Leo rounded another corner, throwing a popcorn bomb towards Frank and Hazel's general direction as he did so, and had toppled over someone. Not Percy. Not golden automaton statute. The homeless woman from before.

Up close, he could see patches missing from her filthy grease gnarled hair. And her face… he didn't have a word for what color her eyes were. And her teeth were pin point sharp. What he had thought might have been a cleft lip had him looking away as he scrambled to get back to his feet. _Lady,_ he'd said, _you need to get out of here._

She had replied, _I'm exactly where I mean to be, Leo Valdez._

An explosion overhead had sent rock and debris flying, Leo rolling out of the way just in time. When he'd turned back, the homeless woman was gone; a chill had run up his spine despite the sweltering son. There hadn't been time to think about it. From her place perched watching, the two faced goddess shouted in echoing voices to _kill them like you mean it_ and _there are no friends when only one can be the winner_! Hazel had cried out, falling to the ground, one of the Nikette's stood above her. She had lost her weapon; Leo had seen the moment of consideration. When Percy had glanced from her to the goddess and back again, weighing up his options. It never should have even been a question— help Hazel before one of the whacky golden plated automatons could cause her any more harm.

 _Percy… go!_

 _We need to get Nike._

 _We_ need _for our friends not to die._

Percy hadn't said anything more after that. He'd gone in like a tropical storm with the way he slashed and moved as if he didn't answer to gravity. Four had seemed like a nice fair number, one for each of them. Nike hadn't been pleased with them when they purposefully began attacking the automatons and as she pulled at her hair and tore at her two faces, she shook loose more golden feathers replacing each fallen Nikette with three more. Leo melted more than one of the golden statues faces off, though it didn't seem to hinder them from trying to kill him. Instead, he eventually took to melting their legs off because they couldn't chase after them then leaving them mostly useless.

"Leo… earth to Leo." Piper waved a hand in front of his face and he blinked back inside his room. When he looked down, she'd taken hold of both his arms just above his elbows. "What's going on inside that head of yours?"

"Two things. The homeless woman— what was she doing there? How did she even find us? I swear I saw her again near Percy during the fighting but there were so many things happening at once…"

"You can't trust what you saw?"

"Exactly."

"And what's the second thing?"

Leo chewed his lip, shook his head, and finally pulled his hands from inside his utility belt forgetting whatever odd or end he'd been in the middle of constructing. "Before we shoved a sock in her mouth, she said things. She asked us why we would want the Olympians to win."

Piper's kaleidoscope eyes fixed on him but it was clear from the way her eyebrow raised that she wasn't following Leo. She didn't understand where he was going.

"Percy laughed at the question."

Leo had looked at him like the boy had lost it or maybe grown a second and third head. The son of Hephaestus had added, _uh maybe to live?_ To which Percy had locked eyes with him and with the straightest of faces he'd ever seen replied with one question: _Can you honestly call this living?_


	7. A Game of Tag with a Sea Serpent

**Where the Shadows Meet the Sea**

Chapter 7

 **A Game of Tag with a Sea Serpent**

Percy

* * *

Honestly? Percy shouldn't have been that close. Okay, so maybe he shouldn't have jumped overboard into the ocean in the first place but Percy couldn't help himself. And wasn't judging him for that kind of unfair and _really_ splitting hairs given everything? He thought so.

Annabeth was stood next to him on the deck of the Argos II with the sea breeze catching her hair causing it to glint in the sun and it felt _too bright_. Like whose hair honestly soaked up the sun and threw it back in his face like that? Like liquid gold itself. It reminded him of the creepy Friendship goddess apologizing to him because she felt sorry for him having to date someone who looked like the light. It wasn't that it was _funny_ exactly but she had seemed genuinely mortified that he couldn't find anyone "better" to consort with than a blonde and despite himself, he snorted.

"What?" She arched a brow in his direction and Percy nearly choked on his own tongue as he attempted to turn the snort into a cough. He pounded on his chest a few times and hacked the hardest he knew how until he was sure he'd done a pretty convincing job of coughing.

"Got something caught in my throat." Percy half growled trying to make his throat sound more raw and winded than it really was. Annabeth half rolled her steel colored eyes at him.

 _Yup. Totally bought it. Definitely acing this whole normal boyfriend thing._

"Anyway, like I was saying—"

Percy's eyes drifted from her out across the ocean. He leaned forward against the rail, both his hands clasped. They'd taken the bandages off and with lots of nectar, ambrosia, and a little of Hazel's magic (with coaching form Calypso via Iris message), he'd regained some movement and sensation. It crackled when he moved it, his fingers and arm almost constantly felt heavy like he'd fallen asleep on it, and he hadn't managed to pick a single thing of any weight up with it (not that gross motor skills had ever truly been his thing) but it moved.

Sort of.

A bit.

 _At least you don't have the bandage any more._

It was sort of difficult to be taken seriously as a demigod when you looked maimed. Epic battle scars and things were entirely badass but wearing a splint to a sword fight? Nike had not only pulled it together long enough to laugh in his face but she'd also kept with it long enough to ask his friends if he were serious (apparently she was mortified that they would send a handicapped demigod on a quest to 'deal' with her— as if he were handicapped). So what if he'd mocked her shitty sweatshop made shoes and joked about Adidas being better? There was stooping low and then there was apparently the deific version of stooping and she straight on chucked herself down deep. If it weren't for the fact that she was chained up with duct tape and a sock shoved down her throat he might have been seriously tempted to try feeding her a sneaker… or sapping all the moisture form her body and exploding it into a stupid dusty spec.

 _I wonder if she'd just reform again in a few minutes. She is a goddess after all._

Percy shook his head and with his gaze out across the ocean, he tried to bring himself back to Annabeth. It was hard to stay in the present even more so than usual. His mind was like a sieve and her words were like sand, they just kept falling through. He'd stopped listening who-knew-how-long-ago but the son of Poseidon had some sense of duty at least. Every so often he nodded his head, or cast her a glance and gave an appropriate timed _hmm_ or something like that. Annabeth hadn't punched him in the shoulder and scolded him for zoning out so he must be doing okay.

Annabeth's voice was a familiar backdrop and the cool ocean breeze against the back of his neck felt good compared to the heat of the sun. For a second he should be able to relax and catch his breath before their next trial but he couldn't. Something inside of him was still so tightly wound and as he watched the way waves broke against the side of the ship he let his awareness stretch out further checking for any sign of danger.

 _There._

Somewhere below the ship, the son of Poseidon could feel the sea serpent. It wasn't a behemoth in so much as things from the deep were concerned, but it was _very very big_ and it was also definitely honing in on the _Argos II_. It wasn't blood thirsty, at least not yet. Mostly, it felt curious, if he could judge the way it was tailing the ship from a distance— close enough that it couldn't be a coincidence and deep enough below that it wouldn't be evident by anyone looking overboard.

"—so then Jason and I left word by— what are you doing?"

"Taking my shoes off."

"I can see that seaweed brain but why?"

"Because these are my only pair."

"I'm not following you." Her eyebrows met in the centre of her forehead.

Percy rolled his eyes as he dropped one shoe onto the deck before moving onto attempting to untie the other. Stupid double knots.

"Because, _Annabeth_ , I don't exactly think goddess of sweatshops is going slip me another pair if I lose these ones."

He didn't wait to hear his girlfriend's response as he climbed up on the rail and jumped overboard flipping a few times with a _woop!_ before he disappeared beneath the waves. The water was ice and it bit at his skin, so frigid that it stole the air from his lungs in one massive exhale. For a moment his skin felt raw and it reminded him of a river of fire; it sent a trill through him which was seriously messed up (but he pushed the half formed thought down deep where the rest of his almost-self-realizations currently lived in feigned ignorance so he could prevent an early onset life crises).

The first breath he took was a shallow one, hesitant to try to fill his lungs. Ever since Alaska and the fear of drowning thing he was skeptical, but Percy also wasn't running from danger. Most of the time, recently, it felt like he was running _towards_ it. Or in this case, he was swimming in what was definitely a totally casual son of Poseidon just going for a swim in the deep deep ocean totally oblivious to curious sea monsters sort of way. Yeah, he was totally sure that came across. The best thing about the water when combined with his innate abilities, was that it didn't matter that one of his arms around more or less decorative for all the use it gave him. He didn't need both arms. Percy had always been an incredible swimmer and though it meant he had to work a little harder, his legs were powerful and for just a few seconds he didn't feel damaged.

Percy could almost feel whole if it weren't for the massive hole in his chest.

The sea serpent was about forty feet below him but he could feel its focus shift onto him and he could hardly blame it. The son of the sea had made sort of a grand entrance and he was almost enjoying himself flying through the water, zigzagging and doing loop de loops (he'd forgotten how good it felt). As he did another loop, he caught sight of the serpent thrashing its massive tail as it propelled itself towards him and Percy just watched letting the scaled behemoth get closer. It was a murky sort of blue with rust tipped scales, a spindly spine of dirty yellow running the length of it. Both of its heads had mouths wide open (because one apparently wasn't enough) with row after row of pointed teeth. They were mostly blackened with bits of things stuck between them and Percy couldn't help to think the thing really could have used something to help fix that underbite because it was seriously something else the way its jaw stuck out so much further than the rest of its face.

It didn't take any effort. He hardly felt like he was flexing a muscle as the water launched him sideways out of the path of the serpents open maw.

"Waaaarrrrgggghhhhhhh!"

The monster growled under the water. Apparently it wasn't quite sentient which was surprising because Percy had met some pretty unintelligent aquatic life that could talk. Like sea slugs. The things honestly were _so slow_ but they still managed to string a handful of words together and he was pretty positive they weren't full sentences because everyone would have died before they finished a thought. Kicking his feet, Percy tailed the monster just a little wider. The thing had shot with such speed at him that it wasn't able to slow down quickly enough. It breached the water and flew through the air before falling back and doing the world's largest belly flop back into the ocean.

The boy snorted to himself. If the others were still above deck on the ship he was sure that they would be soaking. He could practically hear Annabeth grumbling. As he chuckled to himself, the monster shook both its heads as if trying to clear itself from a daze.

 _We could leave before the thing can see straight._

In that moment, they could have left. The sea monsters was stunned whether it was from the dizzying display put on by the son of Poseidon, changes in pressure from the deep to here, or the absolute killer of a belly flop (that would go down in the records, Percy was sure). In that moment Percy could have jettisoned back to the ship and shouted for Leo to take them airborne and the seven could fly the rest of the way to Sparta.

 _That's the best idea._

It just didn't happen to be the idea that he decided on. Besides, sea serpents weren't exactly meant to be so close to the surface. There was a reason they were creatures of the deep. If he didn't take care of it then who was to say that it wouldn't take an interest in a mortal's ocean liner or a cruise ship and decide to have a little snack? _It's sort of my moral obligation given it's my element and all._ Not that it took a lot to convince himself… it was easier than it should have been. But that was another one of those pesky almost-self-realizations that he just didn't have the stomach (or the heart) for recently.

Instead of swimming away from the monster, Percy flew through the ocean straight towards it. He reached behind him and pulled the black blade from where it rested— seriously the sheath was _amazing_. Leo had done a fantastic job of fashioning one that rest on his back without hindering his broken shoulder. It had taken some practice to get used to since until a minute ago he'd had a pen sword (he still kept hoping to find Riptide in one of his pockets). The weight of the black metal in his hand was familiar, though strange under the water. Percy blew passed the monster and smacked it with the flat side of the blade.

"Tag, you're it!"

Percy sniggered as the monster wailed out what he could only take to be sea serpent for a whole lot of expletives. Apparently it wasn't accustomed to being 'it' in tag because it neared all five or so rows of its absolutely gnarled teeth— _guess the dental isn't too great down here_ — and shot after him. Percy weaved left then right, up and then back down, enjoying the way it felt to fly beneath the water (like sticking his hand out of a car driving on the highway).

"For a big guy, you sure are slow!" He taunted.

The son of Poseidon picked up speed because up until that point he'd been holding back to make sure that the sea serpent didn't veer off course after the Argos II. No, the thing was totally seeing red by that point and was entirely focussed on him. As he gained speed, he rocketed upwards until he broke the surface so fast that he shot up like a projectile twenty or thirty feet above the water. Percy released his hold on the water and it fell away from him, but he had been going so quickly, that for a few moments he kept flying upwards and then hung suspended in the air weightless before gravity grabbed at him and began to pull him down.

Weightless like he was nothing at all. Like he didn't even exist.

The world felt a little quieter and a little calmer.

The sky was almost the same color blue green as the sea below and he wondered if the view was part of the reason Nico had spent so much time in the crow's nest.

The Argos II was off in the distance but even from there he was sure that he could see Annabeth's golden hair glinting in the sun staring at him. He didn't have supernatural vision or anything but he could practically feel the way that her features scrunched together, eyebrows meeting in the middle of her forehead with a combination of _are you serious_ and an extra side of _I'm going to kill you_. Percy's heart fell just as he did, the water rushing up to meet him.

Unfortunately that minor blip in his attention, Percy had forgotten about the sea serpent. Apparently it wasn't nearly as slow as he'd thought because its massive maw was _right there_.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

The words were swallowed up as he landed on one of the sea creatures tongues. He would have liked to have said that he landed on both of his feet but it was a strange angle and without full motion of one of his arms, he wasn't able to throw it out and catch his balance as easily so he tumbled. Fortunately he missed all the rows of teeth… which were a lot more pointy and bone crunching looking up close and he didn't need to lose full use of any other limbs thank you very much. He would have liked to say that it was like one of those cartoons and he gained control enough of himself and his sword to shove the stygian blade against the roof of its mouth and the thing wailed and tried to close its mouth and swallow with little luck but that was the exact opposite of what happened.

The sea serpent's tongue made it impossible for Percy to get his footing and since he was also attempting to avoid getting sawed in half by teeth, the monster did managed to snap its maw shut before they hit the water. His lungs attempted to take a breath in but other than being hot, there was nothing for him, not really, and he was left gaping. And it was dark. So dark. Percy rolled over trying to find which way might be up but he was struggling against a constantly moving surface and it was closing around him, easing off, closing again, and he was tumbling and contorting in ways that he didn't know his body could move until he was falling.

 _Too dark._ It set his blood cold.

Percy held tight to the blade and held it with both his hands hoping that as he fell he might slit the thing open from the inside. So that was pretty cartoonish but he was operating with blood pounding in his head and a nagging feeling at the back of his mind because _how fucking stupid can you be to get swallowed by a fucking monster you could have already killed_? Then there was the ice in his veins and the claws that were tearing at the hole that already existed in his chest; they wanted to crack his ribcage open and split his body in two.

When he finally hit something it was liquid and he slipped beneath a surface that instantly set his skin itching. It didn't burn in the way the Phlegethon had but he recognised it for what it was— corrosive. Percy kicked as hard as he could with his feet until he broke the surface and tried to fill his lungs again. It was something but not enough, too thin. Already the edges of his consciousness was starting to go fuzzy and he had to concentrate so hard to let the liquid touch him but not _touch_ him.

 _Like the ocean but different… like poison and tears and blood… but different._

It obeyed his command, though it was more unruly than the ocean or water. Percy sank his teeth hard on the inside of his cheek until the skin split and his mouth filled with warm copper. _Just like the phlegethon… you bleed because you're alive. Now_ do _something_. _Nico_ always _did something._ Percy chided himself and reached down deep inside of himself until he felt that tug, _just like with that miserable bitch_ , he remembered and then pushed gently at first. The ocean was all around him but the monster _needed_ water so it wasn't like he could drown the thing.

 _But you could stop its blood from pumping or separate the water from its body._ Percy might have been half delirious from oxygen deprivation but it made sense in the maniacal sort of way that any last ditch effort could make sense. The tugging feeling grew stronger and stronger until Percy was digging for something so deep inside himself he didn't have a name for it… and then he could feel it. The way the blood in the monster flowed through its veins like a river with so many different branches. Every single tributary. But it was so frigging big.

 _You just need to stop one, just pinch one closed._

Percy felt woozy, his heart trying to rip itself from his chest. It pumped hard but didn't feel like it was accomplishing a whole lot and for a second he wondered if maybe he was stopping his own heart from beating instead of the monster's.

 _Can I do that?_

Treading water — or stomach acid or whatever — while holding a sword was ridiculously hard with a head that felt like it was sort of encased in cement. Everything around him was shaking. An earthquake? In the middle of the ocean? That didn't seem right but the thought slipped away from him. He gritted his teeth while he tried to close down that one tiny vein, just below where it split and travelled to feed into both of its ugly heads toward its brains. Percy sank below the surface and shaking his head, kicked his feet trying to break the surface once more but he felt like his legs were made of lead. They kicked so much slower than he meant for them to and he sank below the surface again.

 _Even if you kill it you'll still be inside… How will that do you any good…_

Everything around him shook and Percy wasn't sure what he was doing but he _tore_ and _ripped_ and _clawed_ as hard as he could with his abilities hoping that **something** would happen. That something was something like an explosion as he was sent flying through the air with what he could only assume were massive gory chunks of the sea serpent— a fin over there, some blubber there, blood spurting from a massive chunk that must have been its chest with its heart emptying itself finally. Combustion? That was entirely not something he'd expected. Maybe he's upped the pressure and the thing had gone nuclear? Percy couldn't have said what he did as eventually he lost momentum and once more was hung suspended in the air before he began plummeting downwards once more.

"Laddie, ar' ye weel?"

Percy turned and was face to face with nothing less than what looked like a putrified version of a Pirates of the Caribbean extra. His flesh was so pale it looked nearly bleached and there were several worm like things sticking out of his cheek that he was pretty positive were lunching on his flesh. His middle was bloated, pressed tight against the buttoned fabric of his threadbare coat and the son of Poseidon didn't want to know if it was a beer belly or some water logged corpse gastrointestinal thing. The smell wasn't quite as bad as some of the things in Tartarus but it definitely rivaled it.

"I'm… okay…" He answered, giddy with the way his lungs kept filling with oxygen.

Percy called the ocean to meet him under his feet like his very own surf board.

"She wis a bonny beast but dae nae fash yersel'. Thir's a stoatin mony things as muckle 'n' hackit as her, ah ken."

"W-what? I literally have no ide—"

"Juist say if ye'll be needin' us again. " Percy would have liked to say the sight got better when the thing smiled but it really didn't. He wasn't sure if the lack of understanding was because of some really poor dentistry or just because that's how his accent was. Either way, Percy was baffled.

The zombie ghost sailor thing gave a tilt of his hat before positioning himself for a perfect swan dive and disappeared beneath the monster-riddled water. A number of others— because there were mo less than fifteen other zombie ghosts in varying states of decay and garb) followed suit like synchronized swimmers.

"Well that's a new one. Dead sailors. Huh." Percy did the only thing he could in that moment and laughed, the sound maniacal even to his own ears but _gods_ did it feel good. He gave the blade a shake ridding it of some monster goo before slipping it back into its sheath.

Boy, did he need a shower.


	8. It Gets Harder and Harder

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 8

It Gets Harder and Harder to Keep Pretending

Annabeth

* * *

Things wouldn't be exactly the same. That seemed obvious, of course, but for all her thinking, she hadn't spent a whole lot of time thinking about _how_. In hindsight that was pretty naive for a daughter of Athena. But what could she do about it now? She kept going. Even if that meant pretending she didn't notice the way that her boyfriend's mind wandered or his eyes were cast somewhere far away (seeing things she couldn't quite imagine or remembering things she wouldn't understand) or his moods yoyo'ed from one extreme to another and then back again before she had a chance to register what had happened.

She pretended not to notice how still he would stand (she couldn't tell if he was even breathing or if he'd stopped that too).

She pretended not to notice how silent he stayed.

She pretended not to notice while she wondered if he'd lost his voice down there along with other parts of himself… and Nico… but that last part was uncomfortable like she'd swallowed broken glass or a piece of a broken tooth.

Percy never offered an explanation or even a second glance. He was either content that she had not noticed, or didn't feel the need to acknowledge that she had. Either way, Annabeth did the thing she assumed he needed from her: be strong. So what if she was talking to a brick wall for all the response she got? And so what if she repeated the same topic of conversation or story for the third straight time because she didn't know what else to say and it wasn't like he'd heard her the first time anyway? Eventually he would thaw out. Eventually he would realize that he was safe.

Eventually he would realize that Nico not coming back was no different from any of the other times they'd lost someone. And he'd learn to live with the ache until the ache went away altogether. (It had gone away even after everything with Luke and it wasn't like he _knew_ Nico… no, it was different, but if it could hurt less for her then eventually it would hurt less for him no matter how duty bound he felt for the boy). Eventually Tartarus wouldn't have its claws so deep inside of him and she would be stood next to him when it happened, ready to help him put together the pieces.

Annabeth leaned over the edge of the boat and picked at her already chipped nail polish. Her hair was curled with the fine mist of sea salt but she kept it down because Percy liked it that way and maybe he'd notice. She bit her lip and closed her eyes when he half choked half laughed because she knew it wasn't at her story.

 _He's not even listening._

 _No… no it's okay. He needs something like normal. He's just having trouble readjusting._

Hazel had suggested counting to ten before she responded. She found herself doing it then before she turned, grey eyes watchful as she tried to read from his expression what could possibly going on inside that head of his, and shifted over until her shoulder jostled his own. _Maybe this would be the time that he opened up._ Despite herself, the blonde demigod found herself hoping.

"You're a million miles away right now. What's on your mind?"

When he didn't immediately respond or acknowledge her, she added (with more attitude and far less patience than she'd intended), "what!?"

A few additional _ahem_ s and _ah-ha_ s and _hhhmmmrrrrghhaaaaa_ s and her boyfriend was apparently satisfied that he'd done a good enough job pretending that he was either coughing up a lung or that he'd swallowed some sort of bug. When he replied, she rolled her eyes before she could stop herself and opened her mouth to make a scathing remark before the little voice inside of her whispered at the back of her mind like some annoying guardian angle that snapping at her perhaps traumatized boyfriend probably wasn't going to help the whole acclimating to normal life. _Mother, give me the strength not to strangle him,_ she thought darkly and then immediately felt her stomach roll over with guilt. _I didn't mean that. I'm just frazzled. This whole thing is exhausting and its uncharted territory… I'm still getting my bearings…_

With a quick nod Annabeth swallowed and tucked long strands of her hair behind her ear. They blew free just as quickly so she used her hands to gather them at the base of her neck and twisted them around a few times over until she could slip them through the back of her baseball cap. Percy didn't give a second look to her, his eyes were far away. She sucked in a deep breath and waiting, again, until the count of ten and did the only thing she knew how once more: she continued.

"So anyway, like I was saying," but she hardly paid attention to the story that she was telling.

It was better than the silence that stretched between them otherwise.

Grey eyes dropped as she picked at the nail polish on her fingers. It was something she'd taken to doing in the evenings because it occupied her when she wished she was doing other things (like maybe making out with her boyfriend or celebrating that they were back together or talking or _something_ that felt normal between them) or when she couldn't sleep— there didn't seem to be much point because Percy would wake screaming from nightmares and he'd be inconsolable and even if her being there didn't quiet his mind when he came around, she still felt a duty to _be there_ if nothing else. It also gave her something to look at and pick at when they were stood (so close together but so far away) at times like right then.

Irises drifted from the chipped paint to Percy. The son of Poseidon's eyes were focussed she just couldn't tell on what. _At least he's looking a little better._ The other was still more skin and bones than anything else but the hollows of his cheeks were just a little bit softer and the color had begun to return to his skin. It wasn't the deep tan that she was accustomed to but the daughter of Athena wouldn't mistake him for a ghost any longer. _That's something_ , she reminded herself. The bandages had come off of his shoulder finally though she didn't have the heart to look at the skin, or the rest of the healing wounds, in all honesty. She should have helped. She should be able to but the thought turned her stomach and sent a shiver down her spine. Piper had been a massive help— which was saying a lot. Not only had she calmed Percy from his panic that first night but on many of the nights following and changing his bandages and helping Hazel with the healing… Annabeth might have to rethink her perception of the daughter of love.

Percy's sudden movements pulled her from her thoughts and her voice trailed off for a moment. Her muscles tensed and she side stepped before she could stop herself her hand fell to her dagger. _What were you going to do with that, Annabeth? Stab him if he started having one of his episodes._ She had to swallow a growl in frustration at herself as she cleared her throat. "What are you doing?"

It was obvious what he was doing as he jumped around on one foot with his knee raised as high as it would go. With the use of only one hand he'd attempted to undo his laces but finding that bust, he dropped his foot back down to the ground. One foot stepped on the back of his heel and he managed to yank his foot free before he did the same with the other foot.

Green eyes narrowed as he glanced up at her in a way that left her cold.

"Taking my shoes off."

Percy had baffled here plenty in her life, but never before had he left her standing there feeling stupid. And the way he said her name before he'd jumped overboard… for a second she was stood there gaping.

"Did he just—" Leo questioned, poking his head up from who-knows-where.

"Take off his shoes before he jumped overboard? Yes."

"Why?"

"Because apparently they're his only pair."

"Wha— No. I meant, why did he jump?"

"I have absolutely no idea."

Annabeth didn't bother kicking off her shoes. She took a deep breath and climbed over the rail and dived into the sea after him. The water was cold against her skin and the salt stung her eyes but she glanced around under the crisp blue water. Percy was speeding away far below her. She had no hope of reaching him. Open water made her nervous, especially the sea, and she wasn't a particularly strong swimmer.

 _He's… gone for a swim. Okay._

She kicked her feet and swam back towards the bright light of the surface. When she broke the surface her lungs took a deep breath and she shook her head, glancing back towards the ship. The others had gathered around. It wasn't every day a demigod jumped from a vessel traveling to save the world without any apparent motive. "He's gone for a swim," she said as if that were totally normal.

Sucking in another breath, she kicked towards the boat and waited for one of the others to throw a rope down. The one thing she kept repeating to herself was that she shouldn't cry, not out here, not where others could see her. How ridiculous was she? Just jumping into an ocean after a boy who didn't need her, at least right now. Annabeth blinked back tears sure that the salt water streaming down her face was probably cover enough. When the rope ladder was tossed down she made quick work of climbing up it.

"I must have bored him." She replied dryly to Jason and Leo who were both looking at her with concern.

"Are you alright?" Jason asked, his voice soft enough to stay just between them.

Hazel and Piper were watching but from a respectable distance. Once the rope ladder was pulled up Leo murmured something about tinkering with something or there for Festus.

"I just don't know what to do about him. He's acting…"

"Strange?" Jason questioned, a blonde brow raised. "Not how you expected him to?"

"It sounds awful when you say it out loud," she whispered, wrapping her arms around her middle. She wasn't exactly cold but there was still a shiver up her spine anyway. Or maybe she was just trying to hold herself together. "I don't know what to do. I'm trying to act like things are normal for him but they're not and he's not giving me a lot to work with. It's not like I expected him to just pick up where things left off but—"

"—didn't you?" There was no malice in his voice. Jason leaned against the rail she'd been stood with Percy at not ten minutes before. For a moment he cast his eyes over the ocean and she knew that he was choosing his next words carefully before he turned back, his blue eyes locking with her grey ones. "I'm not saying it's intentional, Annabeth."

"What else am I supposed to do?" She sighed. "The mission… I thought if we could get him up and going, get him _doing_ something again it'd get better. You've seen the way he's been since he's been back. It's like he's holding up the sky all over again only this time he doesn't have to, Jason. We don't _need_ him to but he won't get out from under it."

"It's not something he can necessarily help."

She wilted as she stood on deck. Going to find Nike had seemed like the best course of action. Percy would have been an obvious choice before Tartarus so why should it be any different afterward? He was up and he was moving. He was alive and he was _fine_ but the shoulder injury and lack of use of his arm and Nico… "I thought if he didn't get moving then he never would. Being down there and losing Nico… whatever happened, Jason, he needed to see he could still do this, that he could still win— and he did!"

Jason's blonde head nodded but she knew he was careful in choosing his words. "We can all see what he means to you— from the moment you began looking for him it was obvious. You're devoted," she could feel it coming, the weight of the 'but' that the son of Jupiter would deliver, "but right now he can't act the way you want him to… and I know a thing or two about that."

Annabeth's throat felt a whole lot tighter than it had a second ago. Her gaze fell to the ocean where the water parted and Percy rocketed through the sky like a dolphin or a whale. He might have been small in the distance but she could feel the freedom that radiated off him in that moment. As the water fell away and he kept on flying upwards. As he hung in the air, arms out, one with the black sword he hadn't let out of his sight since he'd returned.

"What should I do?"

"Right now… worry about _that_."

And Annabeth saw it, too, the massive black sea serpent with green and blue glistening scales soaring up to meet her boyfriend while he fell down straight towards its gaping jaw.

"Percy _fucking_ Jason," she muttered under her breath and clenched her fists.

"Holy Hera, did you see that!? That thing just— did it _swallow_ him?" Piper swore under her breath as she rushed from the rear of the boat. Hazel was close on her heels, blond curls bouncing behind her.

"We have to help him."

She would have liked to have said that she immediately agreed and hadn't instantly been furious at her boyfriend but both of those things would have been a lie. Leave it to Percy to jump into the ocean because there was a sea serpent and not _tell_ them. No, instead he had to go taunting it and then get distracted by _whatever_ and be swallowed by the damn thing.

"Leo— get this thing ready to go airborne."

"Yes ma'am," he said with a mock salute and scurried off.

Annabeth turned back to the others. "We need to lure that thing to the surface and—" the others waited, watching, but her mind was blank, "— and… I-I don't know," she whispered. The tears from before pricked at the back of her eyelids and she glanced back out over the ocean.

"Maybe if we feed it something wretched we could get it to puke him up?" Piper spoke, her face scrunching. "I mean… maybe I could shoot loads of rotten cabbage at it? I've never tried to get _bad_ food before but this bad boy hasn't exactly failed us yet." She said as she patted the cornucopia hanging from her belt. "Worse comes to worse, I could try pickled pigs feet. I can't imagine _any_ monsters able to stomach that." She shivered at the thought.

Sniffling, Annabeth nodded. "We just… we need to get you close enough."

"I can fly us over the water. We can use a shield to create a reflection against the top of the water. Something glitzy should catch its attention." Jason offered.

"Right, yeah… that's good."

"Guys… there's something you need to see." Hazel pointed towards the waters. The ship had come more or less to a halt so it didn't drift any further away from Percy. The water appeared calm for another few moments but then she saw it, a disturbance skirting along the horizon. The sea serpent threw itself out of the water once and then twice, writhing in a way that was entirely unnatural. For a moment she thought that it might have been headed towards them but it veered to the right and then left and disappeared beneath the water once more.

"What's it doing?"

"It looks like it's got a serious case of the cramps— what!? Maybe it's a _lady_ sea serpent." Piper grumbled as Hazel's elbow came in contact with her ribs, rubbing the afflicted area. "I'm just saying, why are we assuming that it's a boy monster? Fine, fine, no one listen to me…"

"What… what's that?" Jason joined Hazel in pointing toward the sea monster who, as it writhed and flung itself out of the water and then disappeared back under, looked like it had picked up a number of passengers. The thing passed within fifteen feet of the boat and before it flopped back under the waves, Annabeth's eyes widened.

"Are those— are those sailors?"

"I think that one looks like it was in the marines." Leo shouted back to them.

"He says 'was' because they're most certainly passed their expiration." Piper added, and it might have been bad form, but she was practically falling overboard with how far she leaned over the railing.

"Please tell me you've been practicing raising the dead," Jason practically begged as he turned to look at a perplexed Hazel.

"And he asks that because I swear to all the gods those are some sea zombies trying to filet that massive eel motherfucker…" Piper was quick to add.

"No, it's not!" Hazel's hands were clasped in front of herself and Annabeth could just picture her holding a crucifix and kissing it to bless herself from evil.

"I mean _look_ at it… they are definitely digging their knives in that thing!" The daughter of Aphrodite waved as if it weren't obvious because the zombie dead half skeletal things (because some were more rags and bones than actual zombie) were stabbing the massive monster again and again. Their knives must have been like pin pricks.

"No— I meant that it's _not me_. I can't… I'm not like Nico. I can't do that."

Annabeth's heart stuttered in her chest and her stomach crawled its way up the back of her throat, burning the whole way.

"Then who is?"

But her voice was swallowed by the bellows of the beast. The serpent threw itself out of the water, bucking one final time before it exploded like some twisted (and definitely belated) fourth of July fireworks but instead of technicolored sparks there was a fine mist of blood and chunks of the beast blew everywhere and in the midst of the horrific-couldn't-tear-their-eyes-away-mess was Percy Jackson with black blade still in his hand.

"So ixnay on the plan." Jason murmured and his voice was some level of awe.

"Did you all just see that? Because I feel like the time I got into my grandpa's extra special tobacco as a kid…"

"Yeah… yeah, I see it. I mean they're sort of graceful, right? Like how do they dive like that?" Frank murmured in wonder.

The sea around them was covered in blood and although some monster chunks had definitely landed on the deck of the _Argos II_ , Annabeth was glad it was the opposing end. Already she could hear Small Bob making some guttural noises she could only imagine were pleasure. Damned demon cat had been chasing the sea gulls and when he was quick enough to catch them, chowing down on the thing. Only problem? He had no stomach. So that meant ground seagull guts and meat trailed all over the deck of the ship. She'd stepped in it the other day and—

Percy was _laughing_.

At first the daughter of wisdom thought that he was choking, coughing in an attempt to clear his airway because he just couldn't be laughing. Not when he had hardly cracked so much as a smile since being back. Not when he woke in the middle of the night screaming like nothing she had ever heard before. Not when he spent most of his time alone, silent, staring, unmoving, or climbing up the ropes and the main mast to perch in the crow's nest.

But he was and the sound sent a shiver down her spine.

Percy rode a wave back to the ship as naturally as if he was stood atop a surfboard and he flicked his head back, long black hair fell away from his green eyes. They were jade. They were bright like before because surrounded by a sea of gore, covered in guts and goo, her boyfriend looked more alive than he had any other minute since being back from Tartarus.

Percy laughed and Annabeth felt cold.


	9. There's Nothing Left

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 9

There's Nothing Left to Save In This World

Percy

* * *

The laughter hadn't stopped when he had climbed back onto the boat and the sea water fell back to the ocean. Every time Percy thought he was going to stop, the son of Poseidon would inhale and it would start all over again. The look on the dead sailor's face. The sea serpent and its gods awful belly flop. Accidentally getting swallowed. Lighting the sky up like some morbid fourth of July. Swan diving water zombies. Being alive. Actually _feeling_ alive.

"Percy are you—" Annabeth started but he had already closed the distance between them in a few strides, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hard. His heart was hammering in his chest (because it could still beat, he just didn't always feel it). It was the first time they had kissed since he'd been back from Tartarus. Afterwards he would realize it was probably more shock that allowed him to brush his tongue against hers than her actually kissing him back, but in the moment it hadn't felt that way.

Annabeth's hands came up to his chest and pushed hard, distracting him long enough for her to pull back in his arms. Her eyebrows had practically crawled up into her hair line once Percy filled his lungs, he laughed again.

Percy couldn't stop.

"Percy, what are you doing!?" Her voice rose but he didn't notice, or if he did, he didn't step back.

"Kissing you." He said with a smirk as he leaned forward to do it again. Annabeth ducked.

"No, kelp head, I meant _what are you doing_!?"

"Did you see that?" Percy asked with a vague wave behind him with his damaged arm. The stronger one still had a firm grip on her.

"Dude, I don't think _anyone_ could miss that." Leo answered from above.

The glare the blonde shot the son of Hephaestus made him flinch. Her hands didn't stop moving as she tried to pry herself away from Percy once her attention returned to him. They couldn't find purchase and kept slipping, probably from all the blood and the guts.

"Percy— let me go! You're getting… you're getting it all over me!" Annabeth was never afraid of getting her hands dirty but as Percy held her in his arms, she squirmed and tried to pull away. When he looked down at himself, sure, he saw that he was plastered with the junk and okay, what he couldn't see he could _feel_ (like how his hair was plastered to his face) but it wasn't that bad.

Or at least, he didn't think so.

"What?"

"Percy— it's disgusting."

"It's not _that_ bad. It's just a little—"

"You're drenched in fucking blood, Percy! It _is_ that bad." Annabeth growled, her fingers stained, and still she tried to squirm out of his arms.

"And probably some guts. And maybe some questionable body fluids. I'm thinking, definitely stomach acid. My arms itch." Percy may or may not have purposely pulled her a little closer just to smear some more questionable fluids on her. "It doesn't even smell bad. A little coppery and a little fishy but I mean, that's normal."

"Percy—!"

The daughter of Athena's eyebrows crept up her forehead and her nose wrinkled in disgust. It seemed ridiculous. Why wasn't she happy? Why wasn't she laughing along with him? They were _alive_ and their hearts were beating and even a massive fucking sea monster couldn't kill them. They might have been covered in blood but it **wasn't theirs** and that was the important thing. That they were left standing. That whatever blood they shed, the monsters always shed more. And he thought, _maybe she doesn't realize what it is to be alive._ Because it was easy to forget when you didn't think about it. It was hard to grapple with at first, when everything wanted you dead, that everything was all right as long as you were always the one to walk away alive.

Honestly, he felt a little bad for her.

"— let me go."

Maybe it was the wriggling, or the fact that he felt bad, or the fact that the laughter had died (he wasn't saying that she killed it but she sort of had with the way she was looking at him) but he finally let go. Annabeth nearly fell backwards with how quickly she took a step. Percy folded his arms in front of his chest and arched an eyebrow at her (albeit a gore covered one).

"What's your problem?"

"My problem? Percy— you're _covered_ in blood. You _kissed_ me and you just… you got blood in my mouth!" She lifted her hands as if she could wipe it but then realized that they, too, were stained red and her colour paled further.

"It washes off." He insisted. Without thinking, he licked his lips again. It was like one of those things that happened when you knew you weren't supposed to; it couldn't be helped.

 _Yup. Definitely coppery. Not nearly as disgusting as the Phlegethon but that's probably because it doesn't taste like flaming sewage slowly torching my entire body._

Annabeth never had a problem articulating herself but in that moment she was at a loss. Her jaw dropped and she waved at him. "You just— you just _licked your lips_."

"So?"

It took a second and then it clicked in his head. The blood. He'd licked his lips and hadn't even thought about it but she was stood before him looking about ready to throw up on his shoes because not only was he bathed in blood and guts, he wasn't phased. Percy had gotten it in his mouth and he wasn't worried but Annabeth was… and she was _judging_ him.

His eyes darkened and his voice lowered.

"You don't think Nico and I were covered in a lot worse?"

"Percy… let's go wash off and we can talk about this later."

"I don't want to talk about this later."

Grey eyes were steel. She took a deep breath as if she were calming herself and he thought she had some nerve because he was the one who should be upset. She was looking at Percy like he was the monster, like he'd grown a second and third head, like he was crazy because he was alive and she was judging him. Judging him because he'd licked his lips or gotten a little blood on her and not felt sick by the sight of it.

"Percy—" her voice fell to a hushed whisper and she motioned around the deck, "not here."

"Why? You don't want everyone else to hear?" His voice was a dagger and he didn't care if it cut her. The air around him dropped a few degrees, a chill setting over the air. The beginning of fog crept up from the deck of the ship.

The other demigods dispersed but Annabeth's eyes flitted from left to right, checking to see who might be close by enough to overhear. It was a large ship but it wasn't massive. Since they'd taken flight, the sound of the ocean had fallen away replaced by the wind through the sails.

"I _do not_ want to do this here, Percy."

"What don't you want to 'do' Annabeth?" Percy was goading, and he shouldn't, but there was something dark deep inside him that churned over. Maybe it wanted more blood. "You don't want to talk? You don't want to hear all about how we went through _Tartarus_ , Annabeth? Because that's what you're waiting for— isn't it? For me to spill all the horrific details, isn't it? And guess what—?"

"Percy." She pleaded.

"—Tartarus isn't just a place, _Annabeth,_ he's a god. And that place? It's his **body**. You don't even want to begin to think about the type of shit we had to walk _across_ and _through_ and _in_. You want to know why being covered in blood doesn't phase me, Annabeth?"

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip and her eyes shone with tears.

"Please, Percy."

"We _drank_ it. We had to drink the thick, hot blood from Tartarus' veins to keep from dying. It burned like gasoline and if we didn't drink it our skin would start to melt and our lungs would break down and we'd be a frothing melted wax mess. So we drank it. And when we had a chance? I ate monsters just to have _something_ other than liquid and you know what? Monster jerky tasted good." Her hand was clapped over her mouth and Annabeth shook her head. "It tasted better than anything I've had to eat since." Percy could feel the eyes of the others wherever they were, they stopped pretending not to be listening.

"Stop," she choked.

"We had to bathe in blood to keep the atmosphere from melting the flesh from our bones. I drank _gallons_ of Tartarus' blood. I swam in it. So excuse me if killing a monster and getting a little of it on me or in my mouth doesn't make me sick."

"Th-this isn't you, Percy. This… th-this is wrong." Annabeth's shoulders shook, her eyes streamed and her nose ran down her normally perfectly composed face. Percy saw Misery, saw her weeping, saw her poison, and for the briefest of seconds he wanted to choke the words from her lips. But he didn't.

"You want to know what's wrong with me?" He hissed. The hair stood on the back of his neck. " _Nothing_ is wrong with me." Each word was punctured by a finger pointing at his own chest. "I killed a monster— you know, that thing that demigods do? What I _want_ to do is call my mother, mourn my friend, hang up my saving-the-shitty-world hat for a while because fuck all of the gods. That's right," Percy lifted his eyes to the sky, "fuck every one of you!" he shouted before he turned back to her. "But guess what, _Annabeth_? I don't get to do that."

"Stop," she whispered.

"You know why, Annabeth?"

Percy hadn't realized it but he'd gotten closer to Annabeth, a finger accusingly pointing at her. Tears fell down her cheeks silently and a bloodied hand covered her mouth.

"Because I'm a _gods-damned_ hero."

He spun on his heel and stormed away; the sea thrashed below them.

Percy closed his eyes and let the hot water cascade over his skin. It didn't feel hot enough even if he turned it on the highest setting. He had asked Leo if there was any way to get it hotter and the mechanic had turned it up. It was a little better, but not much. So he had asked another time (and a time after that). In all fairness, Leo hadn't given him weird looks like most of the others, but he had explained to Percy that if he turned the water up any higher the only two that were going to be able to stand under the spray were the two of them, and Leo only because he was sort of fire retardant being a son of Hephaestus and all.

The water just didn't feel hot enough against his skin. It turned pink and then red but it didn't warm the chill that had settled inside himself (nothing could reach it). Percy reached out and attempted to turn the faucet up higher, it didn't move just like he knew it wouldn't. Sighing, he ran his hands through his hair. The water swirled around his feet running red. Pieces of sea serpent blocked the drain so he pushed them aside with his toe.

 _Note to self, don't forget to pick those up and throw them overboard. I don't even want to think about what the girls would do to me if they came in here to shower after._ Percy mused to himself. _Or the guys. Frank might pass out._ And the last thing they needed on this journey was for one of them to be entirely concussed. Percy was only just starting to feel less nauseous and dizzy when he turned his head or sat up too quickly.

When he opened his eyes, Percy moved to grab the shampoo but all he could see was mist.

It swirled around him, heavy in the air, and when he moved his hand, the mist slithered and slipped between his fingers. The light dimmed and everything was dark again. Percy's heart hammered in his ears as the red tinge seeped in from all sides until there was no longer a ceiling but the red acrid atmosphere of Tartarus. It swirled around him and pressed down, heavy. The son of Poseidon slapped his hand out trying to find anything familiar, anything he knew, but there was only the mist. It swirled around him and he could hear the choked sobs of Akhlys.

"Hello?" Percy called out but his voice was swallowed by the darkness.

Turning around, all he could see was the mist curling around him thick, wave after wave. It seeped from the ground itself and floated upwards to meet the low hanging clouds, thick with dust and debris of recently dead monsters. His gaze darted around the pulsating landscape. Her weeping echoed inside his head but he couldn't find her, couldn't see her. Percy closed his eyes for a moment and struggled to take in a breath.

 _You're not really here. This is all in your head._

But when he opened his eyes he was stood on the precipice of Chaos. The chasm stood before him and he could feel its pull, wishing for him to lean a little bit further, to get a little bit closer. It called to him and tugged at him just like Tartarus had. Just like when he'd been hanging onto the ledge with Arachne's web wrapped around him, pulling him downwards. The mist was an illusion of course, it was a mass of hiding the truth and as it swirled around him he swallowed and stepped back. Tartarus spread before him in all its horrific glory. The ground wasn't the ground any more, but the throbbing bruised looking flesh, pock marked and imperfect.

Foliage grows from the cracks in a path that disappears into the death mist. They're deadly, growing in Akhyls' wake but there is no poison pooled around them but Percy doesn't see Nico. He's no where to be seen and al he can taste in his mouth is his own bile.

"Nico!?" But his sound falls flat. Swallowing, he tries again, his voice echoing across the chasm. "Nico? Nico, where are you!?"

Percy needs to search the edge of the chasm because he can't see him from where he stands. Not anywhere. Not that he can see far, it's too dim, and the death mist is thick. It makes it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of him. _He was hanging over the edge. He stepped too far and then he was hanging on by his fingertips. Where is he!?_ But his mind was a thousand miles a minute and he tried to run, tried to move, but his limbs were planted in the ground. When he looked down his feet were beneath the skin, sucked inside Tartarus, a part of the membrane itself.

Percy reached over his shoulder but his sword wasn't there. And Riptide wasn't in his pocket. Empty.

"Nico!?" He shouted again. "Nico, where are you? Nico—"

He tried to raise his hands to run through his hair and catch his breath but only one of his arms would raise more than a few inches. One of them barely moved. And no matter how hard he tried, it would only life to a certain point and then it shook and shivered but it quickly exhausted and fell back to his side.

 _Your arm. The House of Night._

The thought slipped away from him just as quickly. When he closed his eyes, he pressed his palm into his eye socket and dropped into a crouch. The air was gone, or his lungs couldn't pull it from the atmosphere no matter how hard they tried. Percy knew he was hyperventilating but there was nothing he could do as he cried because Nico was gone and he couldn't move and he curled into himself, arms warpped around his knees as he shook.

"I don't know where you are. I don't know where you are," he gasped.

Percy's fingers clawed at his chest, as if he could shove his heart back inside his chest cavity and keep it from popping out but it wasn't any good, he could feel something _tugging_. Pulling. Tugging. Snapping. _Tearing._

Something brushed his leg and he looked down. Small Bob gazed up at him with his big black empty sockets for eyes. "Small Bob?" Percy gasped. The spratus tilted its head at him and let out a low _mrowl_. "Nico's not here. He's not here and I don't know where he is. He's gone. …My heart… I think I killed him," the last words caught in his throat.

The spartus sat before him, not the tiny kitten he often was, but the size of a doberman. Small Bob's head pressed to Percy's forehead and the boy gazed deep into the dark eyes. The cat let out a series of chirrups and meows. A paw nearly the size of Percy's fist batted at his shoulder before returning to the floor. The cat pulled his head back, butting it beneath Percy's chin as it rubbed up against him. He lifted his hand and ran his fingers down along the cat's spine as his lungs stuttered to life once more as the cat's whole body rumbled with his purring.

When Percy blinked the mist curled away. The darkness began to fade from his eyes and light worked its way back in. The mist was replaced with the fog of the shower room. The demigod was sat on the floor in the corner of the shower stall, dark hair plastered to his face, the shower continuing its hot spray but there was cold water pooling on the floor and spraying across the ceiling. Blinking, he turned his head (which was really hard because Small Bob was still head butting him for attention) trying to find the source.

Percy swallowed as he reached up and turned off the shower.

Cold water continues to spill under the shower stall and circles down the drain, but it's pouring faster than the drain can handle. Without moving, he knew that he must have broken something. In his panic, the tugging sensation had been his gut reaction, to reach out and protect (or to crash and to break). He had burst all the pipes… all of the pipes except for the shower.

"Percy, man, you okay?"

Jason's voices comes from outside the shower stall. From beneath the door he can see the other isn't wearing shoes. _He's probably here about you flooding the ship. You know, Percy, that thing you probably shouldn't do._ Instead of tonsils he had boulders lodged in the back of his throat but the son of Poseidon forced himself to swallow and reached out feeling for each source of the water. It took next to nothing to push the water back, to keep it where it could rest within the pipes. The water an inch deep on the floor rushes to the drain until the room is dry.

"Percy?"

"Yeah?" He murmured as he pushed himself to his feet and rubbed the moisture from his eyes. He grabbed his towel and brushed it through his hair before he wrapped it around his hips. When he opened the door, eyes the color of sky met his own.

"Are you… I mean, I know it's a stupid question, but are you okay?"

Without answering, Percy slipped passed him. Small Bob followed on his heels like an obedient (cat shaped) dog.

"I heard you yelling— and then the ship started to flood."

Jason didn't mention anything about Nico's name, but it hung between them just like the fog had hung in the air. Although he could feel the Roman-turned-Greek's gaze on him, Percy kept his eyes down. Hands and fingers shook as he attempted to hold his tooth brush with the weaker of the two and uncap the toothpaste with the other. The harder he focused, the more his weakened hand shook and the harder it became. He dropped both things into the sink and when he glanced up all he could see in the mirror was disgust with himself. Percy slammed his good fist into it and then there wasn't anything else to see but a thousand fragments of a boy who still looked dead (but was the reason Nico was). Pain flared up his good arm as he turned around.

Jason didn't move.

"I thought I saw something." Percy finally muttered. Fingers traced over the pieces of glass embedded in the back of his hand. He pressed them in a little harder, wiggled a few others.

"Something—?" Jason asked.

"From down there. I got lost for a minute."

The son of Jupiter nodded when Percy looked back up. "Come on, let's get this cleaned up before the others come to investigate." He motioned for Percy to join him at the sink. The son of Jupiter didn't say anything, instead, he reached out for the other demigod's hand and took it in his own so he could pluck the glass from it.

"They won't." Percy said.

Jason lifted a blonde brow at him and dropped a shard of glass in the sink. "You were screaming blood murder and you flooded the boat. What makes you think no one is going to come see what's happening?"

"They're afraid of me."

Jason's hands paused and that second of hesitation confirmed everything Percy already knew.

And he laughed.


	10. Worry is a Weight That's Suffocating

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 10

Worry is a Weight That's Suffocating

Percy

* * *

"You really should apologize."

Percy didn't wince as the glass was plucked from the back of hand. How many times had he had shards of glass and broken needles embedded in his palms along the beds of a river? _Too many. I hardly feel it any more… or maybe it just doesn't hurt nearly as much as everything else has._ The sight of his blood bubbling up from the wounds was like the burst vein in Tartarus showering down on him, or the river when he finally saw it for what it was. To Nico lifting his hands to his mouth and drinking his fill, eyes locked on Percy's with the slightest quirk of an eyebrow as if to ask _you've only just noticed it's blood_?

"What?"

Jason had said something else but the tug of his tone wasn't nearly as strong as the pull of Tartarus. Still, he shook his head and blinked a few times as he tried to keep himself from falling over the ledge and getting lost in the past again. He'd already ruined the bathroom. They couldn't afford him trashing the entire boat.

"I said that she's been through a lot since you've been gone. I'm not— I'm not saying that you haven't been through stuff." Jason dropped the final piece of glass into the sink. He went to turn the faucet on but no water came and for a few seconds he looked perplexed. The expression faded as if he remembered that _oh yeah, Percy burst the pipes and is keeping the whole ship from flooding at the moment_ , motioned to the sink. Percy hardly had to think to draw out enough water to run over his wounded hands. The water turned pink and swirled down the drain. The son of Jupiter continued, "None of us can even begin to imagine, dude, but you _can't_ be that way with her. She's been worried to death about you."

"She was worried to death about _her_ Percy." He corrected. "I'm what she got instead."

For a second the blonde was silent as he blinked. The water gurgled as it drained down the sink and Small Bob yawned loudly as if to remind them that he was present.

"You've got to be joking."

Percy quirked an eyebrow at the blonde. "The steam from the shower reminded me of Tartarus. I hallucinate and I'm back there… I blow up all the pipes on the ships on accident without even trying. Without even _feeling_ it. And that was just in the last ten minutes… I literally called up some spooky water zombie things. Like — that's not even a Poseidon thing!? What the fuck is that?"

Jason didn't have an answer, not that Percy expected one.

"You _are_ , though." Jason insisted. "You _are_ Percy."

"I don't feel like him." Percy sighed and pulled his hand back. There were bandages stored somewhere but he didn't bother looking for them. When he opened and closed his hand it stung but the sting was a far away sort of feeling. It was too minor an ache for his attention. "Percy couldn't do the things that I can do." As if to demonstrate his point, the blood drops that stained the basin of the sink rose, swirling around the tips of his fingers. Another moment later and he let the liquid drop.

Jason furrowed his brows and when he frowned the scar over his lip tugged down in an exaggerated scowl. "You haven't been back that long, dude. The things that you've been through— it's going to take _awhile_." He said nothing about Percy's new found abilities; it was probably better that way.

Part of him wanted to ask _how long_ but a bigger part of him nodded because he knew that arguing with an optimist was pointless. And right at that second? Jason was an optimist. He might accept that Percy was different, but the look in his blue eyes said that he felt that Percy would be the same again.

 _How can I be the same again after everything? After what I saw? After everything we had to give and everything it_ took _from us._ But there wasn't a pair of them anymore. There was just Percy. Every time he remembered it twisted his stomach and sent bile up the back of his throat. _Everything_ I _lost._

Percy reached up and wiped the fog from the cracked mirror and all he saw staring back at him in the shattered surface was the silhouette of a teenager he might have known if his eyes weren't so dark and hard, or if his skin weren't so pale, or the set of his jaw weren't so tight. Jason might see something he recognized but Percy saw something between a stranger and a ghost.

"Awhile," he said the word but it tasted like ash.

"You're not going to be exactly the same, but that doesn't mean you're not the same Percy. She loves you." Jason said and clapped the older teen on his good shoulder.

"I know." Not-quite-stranger-ghost-reflection Percy glared back at him in the shattered mirror.

"You should talk to her. Or if you can't… eventually you're going to need to talk to somebody."

"N—" but trying to form his name felt wrong somehow (like Percy shouldn't invoke it until a suitable time and being miserable about self indulgent certainly wasn't the time). Percy cleared his throat and gripped the edge of the sink. " _He_ 's the only one that would have understood and he's not here. The things that happened— the things that we saw…" Just the thought made his vision dark around the edges and his heart speed up in his chest, it felt like it was gnarling itself or maybe tying a noose to hang itself with (at least it'd be over and done with then but he pushed the dark thought away quickly).

Jason's gaze was kind but also stern, he focussed on it to keep his breathing from hitching. "I know. But _any_ of us, man. Me, Piper, Hazel, _someone_. Okay?"

Percy nodded. That was another difference between the Percy he was then and the Percy he had been. Old Percy would have felt bad for lying to his friend's face and averted his gaze, probably owned up to the truth in the end. This Percy understood it was necessary to protect his friends because they would never understand though they would try; it was hopeless and they had bigger things to worry about like looming deadlines and the end of the stupid world.

"We should get Leo in here to fix the pipes." Percy finally said.

"I should probably be the one to ask him." Jason didn't have to say it but he knew that he hadn't been wrong.

"He's afraid of me, isn't he?" The son of Jupiter didn't respond straight away but he didn't need to nod, just the way he dropped his blue eyes to the sink told Percy everything that he needed. The son of Poseidon swallowed and nodded, mostly to himself. "Can't say I blame them."

"Listen— Olympia spooked him. I'm not sure what happened or what he saw or thinks he saw or what _anyone_ saw but he's been antsy ever since. Antsy for Leo, I mean. So, yeah, I guess he's scared."

For once he was right. Everyone _was_ afraid of him. _And so they have a right to be,_ he thought. He reached up and patted the blonde on the shoulder. "Sometimes I scare me, too, dude."

Percy left the other demigod gaping after him.

Buford the Wonder Table hadn't been any where in eyesight or ear shot. Honestly, Percy swore that the thing's volume was programmed to get louder and louder for every day that Coach Hedge was gone. The thing's projection of the satyr swung an impressive baseball bat that tended to flicker when it got too agitated or it swung out of frame (because there was apparently some issue with how far it could project before it went out of focus). He must have been above deck shouting for some of the seven to keep their clothes on or threatening them with pushups. Percy was half surprised that the worktop hadn't accidentally wandered into where they were holding the victory goddess bound.

He wasn't sure he wanted to imagine the shouting match that would escalate between even a fake Coach Hedge and Nike. Percy couldn't have said who he thought liked winning more.

Percy cast another glance over his shoulder and when he was sure that the coast was clear, he tip toed from his room down the hall to Annabeth's. Being inside the belly of the ship at night was claustrophobic. He could practically feel the walls as they pressed in around him, the gravity tugging downwards. The lighting flickered and sputtered out half the time. Leo had finished fixing the broken pipes in the bathroom but it had taken the son of Hephaestus longer, probably because he kept dropping his tools and nervously glancing up when Percy showed up to check on progress. The son of Poseidon had finished draining the ship of excess water and removed the moisture from everything. Turned out he couldn't undo water damage from electrical components, though, so whatever had been fried was still fried.

Totally Percy's fault.

"I'll have to wait until morning to fix it. I mean— if that's okay?"

"Leo, you've done enough. The lights can wait."

"I'm not sure about Greek Fire, though. If we hit any bad patches I'd like to say this ship is fireproof like me but I can't exactly _guarantee_ that all of the preventions I've put in place are still totally in tact so…"

"It's my fault," Percy had said with a wave of his hand, as if he could dismiss the younger demigod from floundering because honestly Leo might be flame-retardant but he had been going so red his face then almost began to lose color like white hot coals.

"Wh—what? No— I mean like— yeah okay so the pipes, but like, that couldn't have happened to any— well not really anybody…." Percy wasn't positive that the kid was remembering to breathe.

"I'd offer a hand but… I sort of only have the one functional at the moment. Not sure how much that would help. That and I missed the second half of the year." Which sucked because shop class was like one of the only ones he was super good at. He'd built a lamp that worked and a few other things. He had actually been pretty excited for the latter semesters when they got to work on more complex items. Percy might not have been naturally gifted but there were so many parts and things he could eventually figure out if he tried hard enough. Given strength and dexterity were a thing he was lacking in one of his two hands, he didn't suppose he'd be able to pick it back up.

Percy's head hung a little lower.

 _It might not matter. You might not save the world or make it out the other end alive so…_

He was pulled from his thoughts by the feel of a hand on his good shoulder. Green eyes lifted and met brown ones and he could tell that Leo wanted to ask a question but he hesitated. It made him feel a hundred times more tired, the kind that went so deep in his bones, Percy would have liked to crawl into bed, pull the covers over his head and sleep for the rest of time. "Go ahead," he finally said.

"Did you mean it?" Leo asked but the question was so far afield that Percy had no idea what he was talking about until the son of Hephaestus continued. "When we captured Nike, did you mean it?" The pieces of the puzzle began to fall back into place and if he'd been tired in the few moments before, it was nothing compared to the black pit of exhaustion that sucked away at his insides.

Percy stood a little taller, squared his shoulders a little straighter, and forced the corners of a mouth that never wanted to smile again into what he hoped was a shadow of the grin he was known for (no matter how hollow the gesture). "Leo, my head wasn't on totally straight."

"What happened before that with the homeless lady… there was something wrong with her. I thought I saw her again in Hazel's labyrinth. It doesn't make any sense."

"Things were pretty crazy. You were probably seeing things."

Leo didn't look satisfied with that, but after he chewed at the corner of his lip for a moment, the younger teen continued. "So you didn't—"

"Exactly. Listen— I need to go talk to Annabeth. Thanks for fixing all this," Percy motioned before turning on his heel. He didn't wait; he couldn't give Leo a chance to ask anything else. Percy wouldn't be able to answer him anyway and he was so tired of _trying_ to be okay for everyone else's sake.

In the moment, though, the hallway had appeared a million times longer and darker. Every other blink, Percy had to focus as hard as he could on his steps because it _wasn't_ the house of night. He wasn't on some psycho theme park ride and none of those gods or goddesses were going to pop out and try to clobber his face, eat his flesh, or convince him he'd killed his best friend. It was only his own demons tearing at his mind and his stomach and his heart reminding him he was only alive because of Nico.

 _You might not have killed him but he did die because of you._ Percy swallowed the unhelpful thought. _C'mon, Perce. Focus on the living, the things you can do something about…_

He might not have felt fully in the wrong and he totally didn't think that Annabeth was completely in the right but Paul had once told him when he first started dating the daughter of Athena that sometimes it didn't matter who was _more_ wrong or right. What mattered was who was willing to offer a laurel— he wasn't sure what offering a flower was supposed to do and it wasn't like he could get any on board the _Argos II_ — and made peace first. Annabeth was the most stubborn person he'd ever met and there was zero chance that she was going to apologize or see herself in the wrong— and he had sort of poked the bear but it both amused and infuriated him that she had the audacity to be angry. After the fact Percy felt a lot less self righteous and a lot more self conscious. And he really didn't want to have to deal with Jason's questions in the morning or the stern look the son of Jupiter would give him when he realized Percy hadn't taken his advice.

 _Honestly, they're two of the most head strong people I've ever met._

Percy lifted his hand and knocked gently on Annabeth's door. There was light beneath it so he knew that she was still awake. Either that, or she'd fallen asleep with her face planted in a book again. It took a moment and another few gentle raps against the door (along with watchful gazes thrown over one shoulder and another in case Buford decided to sneak up on him) before he finally heard the scratch of a chair against the wooden floor. _So she fell asleep in a book. Some things never change_ , he mused though Percy wasn't sure if the thought comforted him or annoyed him. It was harder and harder to tell the difference these days.

"It's late—" Annabeth started, one of her cheeks indented and pinkish, her voice thick but she stopped when her stormy eyes caught his own. "Percy?" She hadn't managed to contain her surprise.

"Can I come in?"

"Uh… yeah, okay." The blonde stepped back and held the door open further and he slipped in. She closed the door behind him before Small Bob could follow after him. The cat growled under its breath from the other side of the door.

The quarters were small, a mirror image of all the rest. A bed in one corner, a desk in another with a chair. A bifold door that led to the tiniest closet he'd ever seen (and honestly, who hung up their clothes when they were on a quest? Percy didn't even do _laundry_ let alone fold or hang up his clothes). Annabeth had managed to make the small room her own, though. There was a small desk on the wall opposite the bed with a small chair. A few books were strewn out across the surface and if he wasn't mistaken he was positive those were text books.

"Are you— who has homework in the summer?"

Annabeth's face flushed and her eyes dropped. She slipped past him and closed the books and tidied them one on top of another. "People who go to summer school. Not that's I've exactly _turned up_ for summer school." She cleared her throat.

"Summer school? You? What'd you get an A-?" Percy asked aghast. Honestly Mr D could have popped up dressed in a pair of grape colored hot pants with the closest schism to his personality being his erratic rendition of waltzing the electric slide surrounded by a drunken slew of satyrs with Madonna as his dance partner and Percy would have been less surprised.

"I uh— I was a little preoccupied after you went missing. My grades in the last semester weren't the best." He noticed that she didn't say exactly _how_ badly they had suffered. Percy didn't ask. "But my teachers agreed that given the _family_ emergency I could do some make up projects over the summer to help bring up my final grades." She swallowed and finally glanced up to meet Percy's gaze. "If we manage to save the world… if we _live_ … I still want to have the best options."

Percy nodded. "I guess that means I'll be a junior again next year." The thought should have bothered him but honestly, he felt nothing about it. Not indifferent but nothing where _something_ should have lived. "Well… like you said, _if_ we live."

"Percy—" He looked up when Annabeth took his hand in her own and shook her head. "We will live through this. We always do. And if you honestly _try_ and with summer school? I bet you could finish before the fall. I'll help you." Her face wore that passionate concentration the daughter of Athena boasted whenever presented with a challenge. Something to fix. Something to focus on.

He didn't know how to tell Annabeth he didn't want her breathing down his neck about something as useless as grades when, for all he knew, some other god or goddess would pluck him up half way through whatever effort he made and decide that it was time to save the world _again_ from some imminent danger that may-or-may-not have been entirely their fault. What was the point when the gods answer was always "don't worry because Percy Jackson will help fix it!" And all it would cost would be the deaths of some of his friends and campmates and parts of himself. Nothing, really!

But he didn't say any of that. Instead, the dark haired teen brought his weaker hand to cover their clasped fist and gave a nod. "Yeah… that sounds like a great idea." When he forced the corners of his mouth into a smile, Percy was positive that he would splinter into a thousand pieces but somehow he held together and Annabeth beamed up at him like the sun (it burned his eyes). "About before… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have blown up on you like that. I was being stupid."

Annabeth squeezed his hand again and shook her head. "It's okay. You've been exhausted… I know you haven't been sleeping."

"Yeah— you're right." She watched him, grey eyes needing, so he continued. "It's just hard… The dark reminds me of being down there sometimes. I get disoriented and it… it takes a minute. And the rooms in the ship are small… suffocating… I can't breathe down here."

"Do you want to stay with me tonight?"

For a moment he stood there across from her, the hair glinting against the liquid gold that was her hair and he wanted the warmth that it promised even if it couldn't give it to him. Even if it was just a thought and not real.

Percy didn't say, 'yes' but he also didn't say 'no'.


	11. It's Important to Remember

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 11

It's Important to Remember There are Good Things in This World

Piper

* * *

"I'm disgusting." Piper grumbled under her breath.

"Aw, come on… I wouldn't say _disgusting_ … Maybe a little on the ripe side, sure," Leo had mused with an impish grin. "Did you forget deodorant again?" He barely missed a swipe from her fist.

It wasn't the whole dust and sweat thing crusted to her like a second skin that was the problem. Frank and she had to put down more mutant animals and monsters than she would have assumed whilst looking for his ancestor's and the Pylosian mint. First there was the Laistrygonian ogres wanting to feast on their tasty bones, Stymphalian birds who also wanted to pick their bones clean, then the exploding giant wart hog (literally the thing sprayed its guts everywhere… she didn't even know that was a thing) which— you guessed it— also wanted to snack on them. The more things they ran into the more things wanted to eat them.

In the end they had gotten the mint as required but not before Piper was good and slimy with the guts of this or the entrails of that. She didn't even want to know what she looked like when they climbed back aboard the _Argos II_ but when she looked down she was convinced the top and shorts she was wearing weren't salvageable which was sort of problematic because she was down to her last few t-shirts.

"We're going to need to make a detour to the next tourist trap. These were my last pair of shorts and I don't know about you but I'm not going to continue this quest pants less. There's only so much the gods can ask of us and fighting without pants—"

"—seriously? _That's_ where you draw the line?" Leo snickered and rolled his eyes. He'd turned up to welcome her and Frank back the moment they'd returned.

Piper blinked and after a few moments the corners of her lips curled upwards. "Yes, Leo, apparently that's where I draw the line. Now I'm going to wash all this," she motioned distastefully to her whole self. "Then we can catch up with the others and figure out what's next… and where in the world I'm going to get some pants."

So of course it was Buford the Wonder Table with his holographic projection of Coach Hedge that was shouting at her to put some pants on the moment she got out of the shower. Swathed in a towel, she'd padded back to her room. From down the hallway she could hear the golden goddess shouting, her voice shifting and changing, in one of her berserk fits. It sent a chill down her spine because sometimes, just for a few seconds, the personalities seemed to merge and she'd have a moment of clarity and the things that she shouted just _made sense_. Those moments Piper felt more villainous than hero for keeping a goddess chained in the belly of the ship with nothing for company but her other half.

Closing the door didn't quiet the goddess but it muffled the screaming. The daughter of Athena leaned against the door for a moment and closed her eyes and she sighed. Moments like those she hated, the ones in between where they were waiting to act, because it meant they slowed down enough to remember how impossible everything seemed. Her voice was supposed to be a gift but it felt impossibly large for a girl all of fifteen years old. She exhaled, shaky and uneven.

 _Grandpa, you always said I had a big voice for such a small thing. I wish you were here now. I have a feeling you'd have some story to help me get it back under control and use it to help my friends._

The blue harpie feather hanging from her hair swung, tickling her neck, as if it were caught in the breeze. The rest of her hair remained still but the gentle caress was enough to let the daughter of Aphrodite feel, if only for a second, that perhaps her ancestors were watching over her lending whatever help and support they could. Piper opened her eyes and reached out to the switch on the wall, bathing the small room in light as she moved to the bed. Piper grinned to herself as she spotted the pair of skinny jeans laid out on the bed with a crooked scrawling note she could just about read.

From that time you thought I should dress more fashionably.

They'll look better on you (and totally ridiculous on me no matter what you say).

— Hotty McHotster

Piper snorted and tossed the note back onto the bed— apparently she wouldn't be fighting sans pants after all. They were a little snug on her hips but where Leo was straight she was curves, still, they fit and she wasn't going to complain. Jeans were a little stuffy for bajillion degree weather and although they'd probably make some pretty cute shorts with a snip or two of the scissors, Piper decided she'd hold off maiming the present for at least a day or two.

Lately she felt different around Leo and given that relationships were supposed to be a strength in her family it rested uneasy with her that she couldn't figure out exactly _what_ was different. Maybe it was the fact that every time they were together it felt not like Leo was trying to tell her something but that he was clumsily dancing around an unidentified _it_. They talked about almost everything so whatever the _it_ was it settled heavy on her shoulders as his brown eyes fell from meeting hers. Honestly she just wanted to shake him and ask him to just say whatever it was that was on his mind.

Piper was lost in thought as she finished dressing and walked over to the small dresser in her closet sized room. She glanced at her sheathed blade and not for the first time she could feel Helen of Troy's artifact (because it was vanity in her hands but weapon in Piper's) calling out to her. It wasn't a voice, not exactly, but an _urging_ that she felt. She swallowed and took a seat on the chair before the vanity and picked up the . Since she'd stabbed that stupid ice wench it'd felt freezing no matter the heat and far heavier thank before.

"Show me something to help my friends."

Charmspeak didn't normally work on inanimate objects but the weapon was interwoven with the divine and for the briefest of seconds she closed her eyes and held the weapon to her heart. _Please, show me something to help them trust me. Show me what we'll encounter next._ When her eyes opened she pulled katoptris from the black leather and bronze hold it called home. The carved wood of the handle felt like the dagger had been resting in a block of ice, so cold it burned her fingertips but she held strong until the eighteen inch blade was free and held it before her. It shone in the dim light of the room, reflecting off the mirror and back again, an illusion of hundreds of blades and mirrors and pipers reflecting forever and ever, mimicking each move until it made the daughter of love dizzy and set her vision blurry.

She blinked and when Piper opened her eyes once more she was surrounded by walls of flames, they licked at her tanned skin and stole the breath from her lungs. She was falling but there was nothing but smooth stone for her hands to scrape against; they found nothing to cling onto as she drooped toward the source of the fire. Although she was falling, she never quite hit the ground. Voices echoed all around her, whispered in her ear, breathed like ice on the back of her neck, scraped at her skin, tore at her clothes, yanked at her hair, trilled up her back and ripped her voice from somewhere deep inside her throat. Piper could not breathe and she could not scream. Tears burned her eyes but never feel.

 _You are broken,_ one whisper chided.

 _You are voiceless,_ another goaded.

 _A child of love without anything to say and no one to say it to._

 _Pathetic,_ another answered.

She couldn't see anything but the blinding white hot retina searing light of flames. Eventually everything went dark though she couldn't have said when. It wasn't the kind of dark that eyes could adjust to but the kind that was so dark it was the absence of any and all light. Each blink of her eyes told her nothing, gave her nothing, and Piper couldn't make out anything around her. It was impossible to tell if she had dropped so far into the belly of the earth that light simply couldn't exist down here or if she had lost her sight. Bile bit at the back of her throat but the demigod swallowed against it and pushed herself to her feet— since when was she crouching? How had she felt no impact with her fall?

The sound of her movements felt muffled by the endless night as if it might subdue her hearing as well as her sight. Both of Piper's hands stretched out in front of her but met nothing more than the icy breath of the air and when they did a wide arc around her to either side, the same. The first step she took forward was tentative, as was the second and third. Eventually her hands came in contact with rough damp stone and she followed the wall until she came to a passage.

 _Not that way,_ fear whispered, _it's too dangerous._

The ground trembled, gently at first and not long after it came the sound of heavy footsteps. Piper's heart pounded against her ribcage— she wasn't alone and whatever else was in the dark passageways before her did not stumble blindly shuffling like her. Whatever it was, it was big. Piper ignored the voices and pushed forward, her pace quickening, her fingers desperate as they attempted to detect any obstacles in her path.

"I know you're here," the voice echoed, bouncing off unseen walls and curves and passages. "I can smell you, child." It was deep, as rough as gravel, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. A shiver ran up the length of her sweat slicked spine. The ground shook harder, dust and debris knocked loose from the tunnel's roof overhead and the daughter of love sputtered, too much debris to breath. It caught in her lungs but she fought not to cough, not wanting to let the monster know where was. "I'll have you soon."

She couldn't take it any more.

Piper coughed, choking on air, choking on things that weren't clogging her lungs but felt like they were. Katoptris fell from her hands and the mirrored blade clattered against the floor. As she pounded at her chest, the blade only barely missed chopping off one or three of her toes (and only because she was so jumpy that she'd launched herself backwards). Piper glared cautiously at the blade where it lay on the floor. _Don't look, don't look. He might see you again… dying in a vision might be like dying in your sleep…_

The daughter of love wasn't ready to see anything else.

The goddess of victory hadn't stopped shouting from the stable down the other end of the hall. She howled incessantly and maybe Piper was too sensitive from the overload of sensations from a vision that had felt _real_ but the sound of her cries grated on her last nerve. Nike's voice echoed like the giant's in Piper's vision…

"He'll find you!"

The words set her teeth on edge and before she could think, she scooped up the dagger. Her head wasn't on straight at the moment because what was she going to do? Stab the damned goddess to death? She was tempted as she threw open the door to the stable because the goddess smiled at her and Piper's blood ran cold. It was a rare moment when one of the goddess' personalities dominated over the other, giving her a moment of clarity.

"He knows that you're coming."

"Who knows?" The blade felt heavier in her hand as if it weighed more by the second.

The laughter, echoing and disembodied as two sides of one whole fought for control, was like nails on the chalk board. It pieced the daughter of love's core and tore at her already fragile insides. It burrowed under her skin and sent the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck on end. It was maniacal, the most horrible thing she'd ever heard. The echoing. The constant fight between two realities.

Piper's hands covered her ears. "JUST PICK ONE ALREADY!"

She felt the power in her voice, the will for it to be true and when she opened her kaleidoscope eyes, the goddess of victory had lost that shaking a hand under a halogen sort of look about her, no trailing essence like after a comet. Her eyes were far clearer, focusing on her with an intensity that stopped her breath for a moment. Nike turned her head to one side and then the other, the sound of vertebrae cracking as pressure was relieved.

"Oh that's _so_ much better." Her large golden wings were crushed to her sides and her back, the celestial bronze and imperial gold restraints that bound her kept her hands and feet together making it impossible for her to move her limbs. Still, she looked on at Piper with a clarity and understanding that made her nervous. Nike's expression looked like Piper was the bound one, not the goddess.

"I'm sorry— I didn't mean to," she started.

"You did mean to, child. I always found it interesting…"

Despite herself, Piper bit. The blade quivered in her hand, as shaky as her breathing. "What?"

"How girls always feel the need to apologize. You are not inferior, child. Do not apologize for things you do not regret. See a victory for what it is— and do not ask forgiveness because a woman's success makes others feel weak. Do not make yourself _less_ because others cannot be _more_."

The candle light reflected from her golden wings setting a creepy halo about her. Leo still hadn't quite fixed all the electrics that ran to the stable after Percy's episode and frozen where she stood looking on the goddess' teeth as sharp as needles grinning back at her, she could see why. But her words also rang true which was actually a little shocking. Most of the gods or goddesses she'd met talked a lot of rubbish and condescending I'm-so-great… not that Nike/Victoria hybrid hadn't tried to murder her friends or been screaming her delusions ever since they'd brought her own board and she'd managed to spit out Frank's sock (still unsure how she'd done that). All of those things were true. Still, the words bristled the hairs at the back of her neck and Piper wasn't sure how to feel about it.

"I don't make myself less."

The goddess simply laughed. "If you think that, you are a fool. I have met _many_ children of Aphrodite who were nitwits but you, Piper McLean, I do not believe you to be one of them. Now… You came here for answers."

Piper hadn't realized it until the goddess of victory, with her golden aura and chilling gaze looked upon her. The vision in her triangular blade had shaken her, but the crazy goddess' split personality screaming from the stables in a way that bled vision with present had called Piper here. She nodded her head. "Who knows?"

Nike shook hear head. It was the wrong question.

" _What_ is waiting for us?"

"Panic and fear, of course. Though I always found it interesting… that love could lead to so much fear. Love… now _losing_ — that is horrifying. But I suppose even if you win, Piper, you will lose."

"Piper?"

"Did I wake you?"

Leo stood in the doorway of his room framed by the weak light of a lamp in the corner. She slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. Katoptris was still in her hands— she couldn't bring herself to put it away. She was equal parts afraid of what it might show her but what she might miss if she didn't have it close to show her what was to come. Whatever issues were causing a damper on prophecies, it clearly wasn't impacting the blade.

"No— are you okay beauty queen? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I saw something but it wasn't a ghost." The daughter of Aphrodite wrapped her arms around herself, careful of the blade she held. So she told him. About the blade. About the vision. About the giant that waited for her as she stumbled, terrified, alone in the dark. About how she was sure that although it was a vision, he could sense her, and she was _positive_ that he was chasing her essence and if he'd caught her it wouldn't have been one of those times where you wake up living after you've suffocated in a dream. About the crazy nonsense their stupid captured goddess kept shouting. About the things she had said when Piper had stormed in ready to cut her freaking tongue out.

"Annabeth and I need to go to Sparta. Alone," Piper finished and the world felt like gravel in her mouth.

Leo leaned back against his dresser leaving her the one free spot on his bed. Mostly it was covered with rags and parts and pieces. She looked up at him and locked in on his deep brown eyes. "I could come with you. Three's better than two, right? Besides, I wouldn't mind being the middle of a demigoddess sandwich."

It was a half hearted joke but she rolled her eyes and snorted at him.

"The only thing you have a chance of being in the middle of is trouble."

"You're not wrong." He smirked.

For a moment silence stretched between them and the panic she had felt welling up in her, the fear from the vision, and the chill from her encounter with the goddess lessened. When she looked back up, the other teen looked like he wanted to say something. Brown curls fell across his eyes and he needed a hair cut but his ears, just a little pointed at the tips poked out and as much as he might have looked impish when he grinned, right then he looked unsure.

"What?"

"I don't want anything to happen to you." The words came out in a rush and his cheeks flushed. "I just mean… I know that you and Annabeth have had this friction between you. If you don't think that she's going to have your back, then I don't want you to go alone with her." His hands wrung a grease streaked cloth that had appeared from his work belt (honestly it was a wonder what he could pull from the thing like the way more practical version of her cornucopia). Normally Leo's eye contact was intense but as he spoke, his eyes stayed fixated on the rag as he polished something so minuscule she couldn't tell what it was in his other hand.

Piper stood up and for the first time since she'd pulled Katoptris from its sheath, she willingly let the blade fall from her hand. It laid on the bed as she stood up and walked over and stood before Leo. Her hand laid on top of his causing them to pause. His eyes were as wide as saucers (he looked like an animal caught in headlights and he might spook if she moved too quickly).

"I don't want to go alone with her." The words were more breath even than whisper.

"You don't have to," Leo offered and she knew that he meant it. All she had to do was say the word and the son of Hephaestus would come with her, whether he was meant to or not.

"She sees things about me that I don't want to know." Piper admitted. "What she thinks— what she sees— she's _not_ wrong, Leo." Her gaze dropped to her feet, to the paint splashed muck stained converse (she was pretty sure that coppery spot was ichor or blood or something) on her feet. Not for the first time she wanted to go back home and see her dad, to climb into his lap like she had when she was a child and fall asleep with her head on his shoulder.

"Maybe, Beauty Queen." Leo murmured and her eyes lifted at the feel of his calloused fingers on her cheek. They were smaller than Jason's, fingers not as long, the skin more coarse but where Jason's hand was oversized when fitted to her cheek, Leo's fit. His brown eyes were warm. "But she's not right, either."

"You're too much, you know?" She smiled at him and before he could drop his hand, she turned and pressed a small kiss into the palm of his hand.

When she looked back up, Leo's face was aflame (except _not_ the normal kind where he actually caught fire and started smoldering). His dark brows met in the centre of his forehead in question as he looked at her. Piper lifted her hand and pressed the worried lines of his forehead flat until he was just looking at her normally… if Leo _ever_ looked at anyone normally.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"Always having my back."

Leo just smiled at her and something inside of the daughter of Aphrodite warmed. She had a feeling when everything was done, when everything was settled, the two of them needed to have a talk. She wasn't sure, but she thought maybe Leo knew.

Maybe Leo knew better than she did and the thought comforted her.


	12. It's Really a Surprise

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 12

It's Really A Surprise We Aren't More Dysfunctional (Look at Our Families)

Jason

* * *

Jason rolled over and smacked his pillow a few times for good measure as he attempted to get comfortable laying on his side. No matter what position he turned in, he couldn't get his eyes to stay closed and his mind to shut down. The deadline loomed closer and closer and the prophecy of the seven kept playing on his mind. The lines… the meaning… he was sure that he had figured out some of it but he didn't want to share his thoughts with anyone else. It was bad enough that someone was going to have to die, Nike had made that clear. It wasn't something that Leo, Percy, Frank or Hazel wanted Piper or Annabeth to worry about. There was nothing that they could do to prevent it but they could prevent the daughter of Athena from losing her mind with fear over it being Percy.

The son of Poseidon had made them all swear not to say anything.

Besides, the physicians cure was something they were one step closer to being able to concoct. Once they had it, whichever of them didn't make it, could be brought back. "So it's a non-problem, really _,_ " Percy had joked but the half grimace half smile he'd worn had chilled Jason's blood. As much as the son of Poseidon was trying to cope with being back from Tartarus and thrown back into the mission, he wasn't just cracking at the seams. _He's shattering,_ Jason thought. _He's spending more and more time alone… talking to Small Bob… seeing things that aren't there. Destroying things._ When Percy fell asleep his nightmares woke up the entirety of the _Argos II_ either from the blood curdling screams or because the elements attacked the ship. Hail the size of golf balls had damaged the sails. Waves that crashed fifty feet high as if reaching up for the ship when it sailed in the sky. The sea serpent with the zombie sailors and the way the thing had exploded, its blood and fluids scattered as if… Jason shuddered. He didn't even want to begin to think about it.

 _It's not his fault,_ Jason knew. _He's not even aware that he's doing it._ But that's what made it so much more dangerous. When Percy got lost, when he slipped back into the pit, or when he dreamed, the other demigod had no idea what he was doing. Whatever had happened in Tartarus, a much stronger side of Percy had awoken. With a war on the horizon that would have been a good thing. But Percy wasn't steady. He wasn't thinking clearly.

And that meant that they couldn't rely on him.

Jason wouldn't dare say it out loud.

The son of Jupiter groaned and punched his pillow one more time. He rolled over again until he was on his back facing the ceiling. As much as he knew he needed to sleep there were too many thoughts playing across his mind. He lifted a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. All of this was starting to give him a headache. Honestly, it was times like this, he missed Reyna. _If she were still here, she would have everyone in line._ But she wasn't part of the prophecy. He wouldn't have had any place in asking her to stay. Besides, there were other roles that needed to be played and it wasn't like he hadn't also been praetor.

He didn't want it, but he could lead them.

 _I'm never going to get to sleep._ There was just too much on his mind. Frank was keeping watch and it would be his turn in just a few short hours. _May as well get up. At least one of us will be well rested._ Each time he rolled over, the festering wound from being stabbed by one of the many suitors ached. Getting up was worse and the blonde hissed as he did so, his feet finding the wooden floor. It took him a moment to rise to his feet, to convince his muscles that they could in fact move that way when they wanted to seize up in pain.

 _C'mon… C'mon._

One step and then another. The muscles eased with each one, adjusting, and eventually Jason found that way to carry himself that made it just a little bit better. He flicked on the lamp next to his dressing table and stood in front of the mirror for a moment. In front of the others he managed a strong front. They couldn't deal with another problem. Their morale couldn't take the hit and already things were uncomfortable. Leo's jokes came just a little less often. Frank's brow rarely unfurled. Hazel cried when she thought no one was looking. Annabeth was a new level of compartmentalizing that was bound to come crashing down; it was only a matter of time. Nico was dead, however that had happened. No one could get Percy to talk about it and Percy was— well, he didn't need to revisit that again. There was a crazy goddess in the stables. And Piper? Jason was avoiding the whole Piper thing ever since the 'incident'. He shook his head and focussed back on the present.

The color of his face wasn't the sun kissed hue he was accustomed to but he didn't think he looked any worse than he had been yesterday or the day before. The son of Jupiter sucked in a breath and took hold of the bottom of his shirt, pulling the fabric up. The wound was wrapped in gauze and it stuck as he attempted to pull it away to glimpse at it. It was black and festering around the wound, the sort of divine poison that wouldn't pus but would rot and eat away at him, draining him. It was just a little wider than yesterday.

 _Just another thing._ Jason grabbed a new sterile bandage and taped it up. The one on his back could wait until morning— he'd need Hazel's help anyway. She blushed from her neck to the roots of her hair each time but she did it without saying a word.

Once it was done he slipped on his shoes and left his room, heading to the deck of the ship. Frank was where he expected to find him, leaning over the edge, watching the world go by as they traveled.

"Hey," he said to alert the other to his presence.

Frank glanced up, his eyes softening when he saw the other. For a son of Mars, the other always looked mildly surprised or confused. There wasn't that edge about him that Jason associated with the other children of the god of war. "Hey. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's okay. I couldn't sleep so I thought I'd head up here. You want to head back in?"

"Are you sure?" Frank asked but the Roman looked exhausted. Jason wondered how much he was sleeping, or if he was keeping himself up worried about Hazel. Frank might have been creeped out by Nico (although he was always polite and kind), but he was a good person and he did everything he could to be welcoming. Jason knew that wasn't just because Nico was Hazel's sibling.

Blonde hair falls across blue eyes as he nods. Jason runs a hand through it and thinks, not for the first time, that he needs a hair cut. Not super on the top of his list given the potential end of the world (and all of the seven losing their gods damned minds in the process). "Yeah, go on, dude. I've got it covered up here. You get some sleep." The son of Mars hesitates only for a moment before he finally nods and pushes off the rail.

"Thanks, Jason. Just— let me know if you change your mind. I won't mind."

Jason let his mind wander as he stared out at at the stars. _I wonder what it's like… to be so different from your godly parent. Frank and Mars— you'd never pair the two up._ After a moment he had to concede that he probably wouldn't exactly pick himself and his dad together if it weren't for things like natural leadership (whether that was _natural_ for Jupiter or not was up for debate), strength, stern, and then of course the natural talent he had from his godly parent. His mind continued to drift as he kept an eye out while his friends rest.

Behind him, a board creaked. It wasn't loud but in the stillness of the night with little more than the sound of wind in the sails, and the sounds of his own breathing, the creak might as well have been a shriek. Jason's hand immediately found the coin in his pocket as he turned around only to find himself looking at Piper. Her hands were up and clapped over her mouth, kaleidoscope eyes wide as she looked at him. She was frozen mid step (comically, with one foot raised as if too shocked to place it back down in case that, too, caused the wooden beams to groan in protest) as if the sudden noise had spooked her as much as it had surprised him.

"Despite what it looks like, I wasn't creeping."

Her voice stirred something inside of him. Jason wasn't sure _what_ exactly it was, though so he nodded and swallowed.

"I thought Frank would be up here. I was coming to get some air and… then I saw you over here." Piper's words rushed out, soft and apologetic even if she didn't come straight out and say the words. Despite what happened it hurt to think they were in this place where the daughter of Aphrodite was so unnerved (by what— his presence? Upsetting him? How he might react to what she said?) that being in his presence caused her to shrink into herself. As if on cue, her arms slipped around herself, folded across her chest.

"It's fine, really."

"It's not fine. So much of what's happened— what's _happening_ — isn't fine."

Despite the dark, he could make out the way she chewed at her bottom lip in the light of the moon. Jason dropped his shoulders, letting a little of the facade he'd been wearing pull downwards. It weighed so heavily on his shoulders. "I know. I know." He lifted his hand and rubbed his face and then scrubbed his fingers through his hair as he sighed. "I keep thinking that if Reyna were here, if Annabeth were more herself," he didn't miss the way the name sent a flash of something across Piper's face, "if Percy hadn't fallen, if Nico had come back, if _something_ were different then at least a little part of all of this would be easier."

Piper sidled up next to him, keeping an arm or so's distance between them as she leaned over the railing and glanced over the edge to watch the world pass them by below. For a moment silence stretches between them and it is the most at peace Jason has felt since before they'd broken up. Before the 'incident' that had immediately followed. From the corner of his eye, he watched as this former girlfriend fidgeted with one of her braids and the brightly colored feather weaved into her hair. The silence used to be comfortable but just then he felt like he was waiting, holding his breath.

"I'm sorry."

The words drifted on the wind, small but heavy. Jason didn't have anything to say in return.

"I'm _so_ sorry for how things happened… for what I did to you. You were just being honest and it was an accident, truly, but it's still my fault. I'm sorry, Jason. You're— I'd never want to hurt you." Piper didn't quite meet his gaze but even in the dark, he could see the reflection of light on the tears welling up.

"I didn't have any idea how to even— how to process any of it. Talking to you was hard enough." Jason sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't want to hurt you, either, but Pipes, I had to be honest."

"I know. And all I can say is that I'm honestly, truly, completely sorry." Never one to be able to stand still, the daughter of love pushed away from the edge and began to pace. With each of her steps, she held her arms wrapped tight around her middle as if keeping herself together. "I _never_ wanted anything to happen to you. I think— I mean I _get_ it. I don't feel it like you do but I think I get it." She turned to face him, paused in her tracks, and for a second she looked as if she would speak before she stopped. Instead, she lifted a hand to her hair and began to play with the feather hanging there.

"What do you think you get?" Jason encouraged. Maybe she didn't get it at all but maybe she did. A lot of things had happened in the course of trying to stop the end of the world and even if they couldn't be together maybe Piper could still be his friend.

"We all see it, you know? Since Percy's been back," one slow step after another brought her a little closer to Jason. "Maybe it's because of my mom, or just because I've always been able to _read_ people, you know? But I can **feel** it, too." A shiver ran up her spine and she clutched her arms just a little tighter. "She has particular expectations that he's not living up to."

The son of Jupiter could feel it, the way his blood began to simmer in his veins. He didn't want to hear his ex's agenda against the daughter of Athena. Whatever was happening between the two of them, he didn't want to be dragged into the middle of it. Honestly, they had bigger things to worry about and in fighting? It was so ridiculous!

"She's been through a lot, Piper. I don't really think it's fair for you to judge—"

"I'm not. I promise, Jason. Just listen."

He swallowed back his word and after a moment, he nodded.

"He _can't_ live up to them. Not right now, not with how he is… maybe not ever. And he's suffocating. I'm not saying Annabeth is wrong to have expectations and I truly don't believe there's any malice behind it… I don't think she's _wrong_. She's just a girl who's been in love with a boy… and that boy isn't the one that's here now but how can she just _change_ it? The things she thinks? The things she expects? The things she _remembers_? The way that all of that makes her _feel_?" Piper's voice grew quieter and quieter and she stopped beside him, her elbow touching his as she looked out over the water. The breeze that hit his skin then sent a chill up his spine and something inside him, some tension he wasn't aware of, began to lesson. "It's tragic and it's exhausting and it's impossible."

"What are you saying, Piper?"

"I'm saying," she inhaled deeply and blew the air out up, the strands that fell forward in her face dancing upwards for a brief moment before they fall back down. "I'm saying that it wasn't fair of me. Once we knew… once we knew that you hadn't actually been here this whole time, once we knew that those memories weren't genuine, it wasn't fair of me not to question what that meant between us." Piper stood a little tighter as she turned to face Jason. "I just assumed that we stayed together because we _decided_ it. I know that we didn't talk about it or anything but it went without saying, y'know? Because we felt a particular way about each other and that that was _real_ —"

"Pipe—"

"Don't." As her multicolored eyes looked up to meet with his, for the first time in he couldn't remember how long, he saw the girl who was once his greatest confidante. Piper, even with her eyes shimmering with tears she blinked rapidly to clear, was strong. She stood straight, lifted her chin, and he knew that anything she said she would mean with all of her heart. When she lifted her hand and gently caressed his cheek, he didn't lean into the gesture (it would have been too easy and too confusing) but he also didn't deny her it. "Because I thought that we felt a particular way about each other and that us, together, was real even if how we came together wasn't."

Her thumb ran along her jaw and though she was looking at him with an intensity that might have caused others to shrink, he met her gaze. Piper might have been a daughter of Aphrodite but she had never played with others hearts or feelings in the way that her siblings might. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find in the planes of Jason's face.

"What I don't understand, Jason, is why? Why did you get your memories back? Why Leo and me? When you thought you were at the Wilderness school with us, you were still in New Rome so why? Why don't Leo and I remember? Why don't I know what was real? What was I doing during that time? What was Leo doing during that time?" As she gestured between them, the tears began to fall from Piper's eyes. "I _understand_ , Jason, that I expected too much and I think I might even understand why you can't be with me. We never decided this… but even if the majority of memories I have of us, the things I _think_ happened never did, I don't have any other memory to replace them with. I don't have a way to make it feel _less_ real. So when you—" as hard as Piper tried, her shoulders shook and she swallowed a hiccup but held up a hand as if to silence him and continued. "You broke my heart and I know, now, that it's not your fault. My expectations weren't fair but I don't… I can't remember anything differently. I don't have any way to _unfeel_ everything I thought that we had between us. My memories aren't my own and my feelings— they are but they're _not_ , not truly. Not about you. But it doesn't make it hurt any less."

Without hesitating, Jason reached forward and wrapped his arms around Piper. She fit against him in a way he did remember, with his chin atop her head and her tiny frame trembled but she didn't cling to him in the way that she once had. "I don't know, Piper. I have no idea why I can remember and you can't— does Leo?"

"I-I'm not sure. I think maybe he does but it's just a feeling. I'm not… I don't think I'm ready to know yet anyway. Maybe when this is all over, he and I can figure it out. I just wish I knew _why_ Juno chose us."

"Maybe your mother can answer that."

"Maybe she doesn't want to, Jason."

"What do you mean?" He stood a little straighter and leaned back just enough to look down at her.

"I can't help but think… I mean Juno might be able to play with our memories and arrange the swap between you and Percy but she couldn't convince us that we felt a particular way. False memories or not, we wouldn't have _felt_ them. Not strong enough, but—"

"—Are you saying?"

"My mother could have helped Juno. The feelings matched the memories, Jason. It couldn't be anyone else. My _mother_ , Jason."

And Jason thought he had resented his godly parent but the look in Piper's eyes told him he didn't even come close.

The deck of the _Argos II_ was pelted with frozen rain not long after the temperature dropped and each exhale of his breath began to freeze before his very eye. A very _not_ summer like thing. Jason's electric blue eyes searched the horizon for any sign of monsters or gods but found nothing (not that he thought that he would). It was the early part of the morning just before dawn and eventually Percy had to fall asleep. Falling asleep meant the possibility of nightmares and while he never talked about it, never commented on the strange weather they seemed to have, the son of Jupiter wasn't positive if Percy was even present enough with them to know that it had happened.

The frozen rain bit at his skin and soon Jason's t-shirt was clinging to his chest and his back. Piper had gone back in an hour or so ago leaving him alone with his thoughts. He abandoned his post at the front of the ship and headed towards the door that lead to the living quarters below. Just as his hand reached out to take hold of the doorknob, the door burst forward and Annabeth, wild eyed with her blonde hair half fallen out of a pony tail looked not too unlike she'd stuck her finger in a socket.

"Have you seen Percy?"

Jason shook his head and before he could answer Annabeth rushed passed him immediately scrabbling as she slipped on the pieces of ice on the deck. She skirted across the deck as if she were on an ice rink and finally came to a stop by grabbing ahold of one of the rails before she could fall over. Just as suddenly as the storm had hit, it passed and the weather began to clear.

"Where did you last see him?"

"He wasn't— he wasn't there when I woke up." Jason thought that her cheeks burned as she said it; he felt something inside him twist. "I thought maybe he'd left to go back to his room but I checked there. His bed hasn't been touched. I think— Jason what if he's sleep walking now? He could _hurt_ himself or—" she didn't have to continue for the son of Jupiter to understand that he could hurt someone else. Grey eyes, normally so strong, looked to him for strength.

"We'll find him." When he patted her shoulder, she nodded and straightened herself.

They went through the living quarters room by room, including going to the stables below where the victory goddess was shouting obscenities about how she'd feed the flesh of losers to Kerry, whoever or _whatever_ that was. Going room to room meant that, unfortunately, they'd had to wake up the rest of the seven. Fortunately, none of them were hurt. Unfortunately, they couldn't find Percy. They were running out of places to look and Jason's wound was beginning to throb but he stood tall and kept going. The moment he spotted Small Bob, a blonde brow crept up his forehead. The demonic kitten was more or less attached to Percy ever since he'd come back from Tartarus. There was every chance that Small Bob would eventually lead him to the son of the sea. Honestly, he felt a little silly attempting to stalk the cat without spooking it (he'd seen that thing turn into a doberman size hell cat and he really didn't want to see if it could get any bigger than that), but when he made his way back onto the deck, Small Bob climbed up the mast.

Over the side of the crow's next, Jason was sure that he could see feet hanging. And if he wasn't imagining things, he was sure that he saw the faint outline of a specter. Like the ghosts they'd seen in the Necromanteon. Except this one sat on a beam chatting with Percy.

"I found him!"


	13. I'm Just Not One of Them

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 13

It's Important to Remember There are Good Things in This World, I'm Just Not One of Them

Percy

* * *

The wind howled in his ear, tugged at his clothes, and as he opened his eyes, the darkness pressed in around him. It weighed on his shoulders, not just magnified gravity pulling him down towards the bleak landscape, but the atmosphere crushing down on him as if it could grind him into the earth. Percy pushed himself up, to his feet, and dragged in a breath. The air was acrid, thick and it hurt his lungs to breathe it in.

A chill crept up his spine as a bead of sweat trickled downwards. The atmosphere above rioted, the red glow of the sky interrupted by the violent assault of acidic blue tinted clouds churning like indigestion. The wind was humid, battering him with the sweltering heat, combined with the dust and debris it collected along the ground. It ground grit into his skin and into his eyes, minuscule pieces as sharp as barbed wire or glass shards. And on the wind was more than just the dust and debris and churning clouds, but a swarm of shadows making for the son of Poseidon with the speed of an oncoming storm.

He should have run but he didn't.

If there was one thing he'd learned about Tartarus, it was that running from things that murdered you often meant you ran into _other_ things that wanted to murder you. Better to face the demons at hand than run towards a danger you didn't know. Instead, he turned into it and grabbed Riptide from his pocket and uncapped the pen. The blade reached its full length just before he could make out the oncoming threat for what it was: a mass of black clad women with gnarled brass claws for fingernails, rheumatic knotted digits reaching for him as tattered bats wings carried them on the wind. The fiery jewel like glint of their eyes flashed in the dark; there were far too many of them.

 _Curses._

Fighting them was impossible. Each one was sent from some monster, some giant, some creature or person he had wronged or killed or felt he was responsible for their end or their pain. They fell upon him and it was impossible to see, to breath, and the wind howled. Percy swung Riptide, and it was impossible _not_ to kill them. They rained down on him, their wings beating the cadence of his movements, their claws crashing like so much thunder, and their eyes flashing like lightning. Each fallen was another curse. One arm went numb, a ringing started in one ear that grew so loud it was deafening, pressure grew behind his eyes until he had to close them because they felt like they might explode outwards if he didn't.

When he opens his eyes he's somewhere in the atmosphere staring down at his body as he collapses under the weight of the curses. They tear at his skin, claw at his face, but still he slashes at them. For each he wounds or kills there are another three falling from sky where they circle overhead like vultures over a carcass. And that's what he'd be soon if something didn't happen.

Riptide fell from his fingers, some new curse seizing his muscles; they trembled uncontrollably. Percy's screams echoed across the dark landscape and as he watched himself from somewhere in the ether, he could feel the tug inside of him. He knew what he was reaching for but he wasn't sure _how_ he would possibly find it. There was no water to be had, except perhaps the ichor that flowed through their veins. The dark cloud of curses fell upon him and he understood what that _reaching_ was because he felt it, anchored somewhere above his bellybutton like a fish hook through his gut. It stole the air from his lungs and gravity grabbed at him, tugging him. Percy spiraled down, through the dark cloud of women and crash landed back into his body.

"I'm not here! I'm not here!" He groaned to himself.

 _Oh, honey… but you are._ The arai cackled and mocked.

Their claws dug at his flesh, tearing into his muscles and tugging. A scream ripped from his lungs as he tried to kick and swipe at them but the sounds gave way to gurgles as hot blood bubbled up frothing passed his lips. A few of the curses dug into him, as if they could embed themselves into his core.

 _You might have left Tartarus but Tartarus will never leave you._

Percy lays there choking on his own blood and feels the life beginning to ebbing from him just like the tide. The curses pressed down, suffocating him in their frenzy, his heart crushed inside his chest. He could feel it, the way it tugged itself into two and he knew without question that the last curse, the final curse, was from Nico. From the boy he kept forgetting even though he didn't mean to. Percy would have sobbed, would have cried out, but as the arai tore him apart and the world went dark, a tear rolled down his cheek and he silently called out for Nico.

 _I'm sorry_ , he thinks.

Before consciousness leaves him, he thinks he hears somewhere a desperate whisper: _wake up._

There is no waking up, there's only the horrific landscape. Percy and the pulsing purple veins against the seething black terrain, the pulsating growths threatening to burst forth with amniotic slime coated nightmares. They belch, spewing their contents forth and each monster claws its way forth. He wants to know where they're all coming from and why there are so many. Every which way he turns his head they're coming forth, shaking the goo from their bodies and baring their teeth, their cries echoing across the landscape.

 _They're waking_ ,he thinks. Gaea is calling for them and they're answering. Followed by, _where's Nico?_ There's too many of them. Percy needs to get the son of Hades out of here as quickly as possible. He needs to warn him, get their attention, and protect him. _Where is he?_

When he turns his head, all he sees is more of them. More monsters, more nightmares spewing forth from primordial ooze and so many more of them clawing and biting their way trying to break through the membrane. A shriek echoes across the landscape— a three headed snake the size of a station wagon belched fire at a telkhine before chowing down on the chargrilled corpse. It won't be long, not until they notice him. Percy's heart hammers in his chest as his eyes span the landscape searching for Nico and finally his eyes land on the other boy. He's hiding behind an outcropping of rocks surveying the landscape. Even from this distance he can see the tension in his muscles.

"Nnngghhffff—" Percy calls out but there's something wrong with his throat. Something wrong with his voice. "Nnniiinnnuuughhh," he tries again but without any success. Percy tries to lick his teeth but everything feels wrong— his tongue, his teeth, his mouth. He lifts a hand to his throat and feels needle like claws rake across his skin.

 _What's happening…_

The son of Hades turns around and his dark eyes lock with Percy's and the panic growing and strangling his insides fades. For a second he's thankful. The other sees him. Whatever is wrong, whatever Tartarus has done to him, it'll be okay. They can flee. Percy will protect the other and they will be safe. Together, they'll be able to make it, he knows that without a doubt. Nico's eyes lock with his and a second later Percy's heart is crushed by that black dread as it creeps further through his veins. Nico's face drops and he reaches for his stygian blade.

"Stay away from me!"

He wants to call out. He wants to ask why? What has he done?

Percy tries to move to join the other and slips. When Percy looks down at his body he's covered in the same thick, green black slime as the monsters. He's stood in a crater, the membrane punctured, strands still clinging to him as if they can pull him back into the earth. Instead of hands, he has claws. Instead of sneakers on his feet, he has scaled appendages he can't begin to understand.

"I said stay away!" The other teenager shouts again.

 _It's me_ , he's screaming internally but the snarl from Nico says the other can't see it. Slipping in the ooze, Percy clumsily makes his way forward on legs that aren't truly his own, with hands reaching out. _It's me, Nico! It's me!_

Nico is looking at him like he is a monster because Percy _is_ one.

The other boy's face goes pale and his mouth opens silently. For a moment he's hopeful enough in his desperation to think that maybe the other understands. It's _him_. When he looks down, the claws that are his (but not his, not his because he has _hands_ not claws, but these claws are attached where his hands should be) disappear into the depths of Nico's middle. Dark blood gushes forth as he pulls them away, pieces of flesh cling and intestines unravel, tumbling towards the ground.

Nico coughs and blood spatters across his pale face.

Nico is looking at him like a monster because Percy _is_ one and it's the last look the other will ever give him. As Nico falls Percy turns those lethal claws on himself and plunges them as far and as hard as he can. It's inside of him, Tartarus. He needs to dig and claw and rip it out before it takes root and poisons him forever. But he can't find it, that poison, that _thing_ inside of him and as he falls to his knees, blood gushing from the cavity he's made in his chest. Percy's eyes lock with the blank and unblinking ones of Nico's corpse and he knows that he wouldn't care if he was a monster so long as the other boy lived. He hates himself.

 _Wake up._

When he wakes, Percy's hand clutches at his chest and his lungs gasp, greedy to fill themselves with the cool air. A chill run up the length of his spine and when he rolls onto his side, he feels the soft give of sand as it reforms around his body as if to fit his shape. It is damp and when he opens his eyes the sand sparkles in the moonlight. Percy lifts his head and he can feel the way the damp sand sticks to the side of his face and his hands. He looks down just to be sure— that they are hands, that there are no scales, though he can't remember why.

As Percy blinks, he tries to remember how he got here but maybe he woke up too quickly or maybe he isn't really awake at all. It's harder and harder to tell lately… the difference between being awake and being asleep. Tartarus slips through the cracks even when he's awake… but the soft sound of waves crashing, water against water, and then water against the beach calms something deep inside of him. The black nothingness that eats at his insides calms, quiets, and recedes.

"You're up."

The voice startles him. Percy turns and just out of his sight, a little further down the beach, is Nico. The teenager walks towards him in the surf. Each step leaves an indentation in the wet sand that the waves eventually rush to erase, but there's still ten or so behind him. Black skinny jeans have been rolled up to his knees so when the water chases him, it doesn't soak through his pants. Nico's black converse hang each hooked onto a finger. Dark curls fall into his eyes with the gentle breeze and though he tucks them behind his ear, they soon fall loose once more.

The son of Poseidon stands and rushes up to meet the other, throwing his arms around him tightly. Percy's heart hammers in his chest and for a minute he thinks it might crack his chest open and spill its contents for Nico's eyes. But Nico laughs and throws one arm around Percy, the ones with the converse rest somewhere around his hip. And he laughs. Not that creaky, rusty gate sort of laugh but one that's a little pale but welcoming like the moonlight as it catches the silver strands tussled amongst the darker ones in Nico's hair.

Percy's not sure why that statement makes the hair on the back of his neck stand but he swallows the feeling down and lets the other go. "I think I woke up too quickly." He explains.

"I thought you'd never wake up." Nico says as Percy falls into step next to him. He's already barefoot, no sign of shoes abandoned anywhere on the beach. "I swear you sleep like— well, Percy, you sleep like the dead." The grin he gives Percy is like the cheshire cat, all teeth and maybe a little cold (it doesn't frighten Percy the way it might have a year ago, instead he smiles back).

"You should tell my mom that," Percy laughs. "I swear every morning before school she had to drag me out. Or at least, that's what she _claims_. I don't think it was quite that bad. But I bet she'd feel validated hearing it from someone else." Percy bumped his shoulder against Nico's. It takes a minute but the thought of his mother twists his stomach and his heart. Nico's dark eyes look at him a little more softly as he watches the look presumably change across Percy's face. As if he were reading his mind Nico's hand came to rest on his shoulder and gave a gentle and tentative squeeze.

The other demigod looks like he isn't sure if Percy will push him away or scold him for the contact, but his dark eyes were watchful waiting for him to do _something_. Whatever that something is, it doesn't look like Nico expects it to be good. And then he opens his mouth, having built up the courage, and says softly, "Sally isn't going to be mad at you. She knows that you love her and you'd've come home if you could have. She knows it's not your fault that you've been gone." For a second, Nico's mouth stays open and Percy thinks that he might say more but it finally closes and he drops his gaze.

"I've never been gone this long without seeing her. Or at the very least, getting to check in with her. I've been gone for _so long_ , Nico. I don't— I can't even remember the last time I saw her. January? Christmas vacation? It's all foggy," he waves towards his head.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Percy stops walking and stands, turning to face the surf. The tide is going out, he can tell without even trying. From the way the water dances, the foam churns and he sighs. Each time the waves surge up the shore, they retreat just as quickly and he picks up a pebble and skips it across the water as best he can. It goes a few times before disappearing below. And then he picks up another and skips it again. _What's the last thing?_ He wonders as he throws a third. Nico doesn't interrupt his thoughts and he remembers going with Paul to buy his mother a bracelet. She didn't have many nice things; she had never been able to afford them with Smelly Gabe wasting all their money and after he was gone it was a bad habit. She rarely bought herself anything.

"She wanted a bracelet. She didn't _say_ it, but she was eyeing it in a magazine. It was white gold and I saved all of my allowance. I wanted to get it for her for Christmas. She _never_ bought herself anything, Nico. Not unless she needed it. So I saved and I saved and I went too late. It wasn't on sale any more and I was so upset because I couldn't afford it. But Paul… he agreed to make up the difference. He said it could be an advance on my allowance. He came with me to buy it. I picked out the wrapping paper and everything… I wrapped it and put it under the three. I was so excited to see her open it."

But he couldn't remember her opening it.

"That was December," Percy finally adds, his fingers digging hard into his palms. "I haven't been home since _December_."

"You didn't have a choice."

"I didn't at first. But then I woke up and the world needed saving… She didn't want this life for me, Nico. She wasn't going to let me go to Camp Half Blood… she wasn't going to tell me about any of it. She married my first step-father to help _hide_ me… and when the world needed saving I didn't think twice about whether or not I should stop and see her."

"You do things no one else can or no one else will, Perce. She knows that. She loves you and she'll be waiting for you when you get back."

The breeze is soft against his skin and it blows his own black strands across his forehead and to the side. Nico's words are soft but Percy also knows that Nico means them. For a moment, he wants to ask how the son of Hades could be so sure but for once in his life common sense catches up with him before he could open his mouth and he's glad. The question only would have picked at wounds Percy isn't sure have totally healed for Nico because the other demigod _had_ to believe it. Sally is the closest thing that he has to a mother, which wasn't saying a whole lot. But she had fed him on numerous occasions, clothed him on others, forced him to trim his hair or take a shower. The things that mothers do. Besides Hades and Persephone, she is the closest thing to family that he has.

Percy turns to the other and licks his lips before he finally asks, "I… I get what you didn't tell me because two camps, war, neither knowing about the other existing, but what about my mom? I mean, you've met my mom. She— she loves you, Nico."

The silence that settles between them is thick enough to reach out and touch. Nico drops his eyes to where the waves are working to bury their feet beneath the damp sand. They have stopped walking and for a few moments the tide is victorious washing sand and pebbles and shells over their feet until all that remains are ankles.

"I wanted to," Nico finally says. His dark eyes are fixed somewhere on the horizon. "I wanted to tell her, Percy, I swear." When he turns to look at the other, Nico reaches out and takes his hand in his own and it feels like a lifeline to keep them from drifting apart. "I even went to your apartment to see her and Paul. I was going to. It wouldn't be the first time I'd gone against his orders for you and she… they deserved to know."

"Then why didn't you?" Percy doesn't pull his hand away.

"She never would have left you at Camp Jupiter and there was this whole mess of a plan and reasons and— I _wanted_ to tell her. I planned to… I was there about to spill the whole thing to her and Paul and then Annabeth called." Percy doesn't ask but he thinks he hears a certain tone at the mention of the blonde. Nico only pauses for a second, long enough for him to question it.

"What does her calling have to do with you not telling them?"

Nico is the one who drops the hold of their hands so he can wrap his arms around himself like he's fighting off some invisible chill.

"She was worried sick. I heard the way the two were talking about you. The planning, the checking in, what else could be done. I knew that Sally wouldn't leave you at Camp Jupiter without trying to check on you. She would have told Annabeth— and you know what that would have meant. Annabeth would have done _anything_ to find you, gods be damned. She would have started a war between two camps that we couldn't afford on a cusp of things that were about to be." Nico sucks in a breath and catches Percy's eyes with his own. "So what other option was there? I couldn't tell Sally that you were alive in one breath and refuse to tell her where you were in the next. I couldn't tell her anything."

Percy doesn't like it, but he thinks he understands it. No one want to meant to know. No one was meant to carry that burden and yet it fell to Nico entirely on chance. It wasn't the first time that Nico had to shoulder things that others didn't (and didn't know about). And it wasn't as if Nico had done nothing about it…

"You were worried about how I'd react when I realized what was happening…"

The other boy doesn't say anything to deny it. The silence hangs between them so thick Percy thinks he can reach out and touch it if he wants. Drag his fingers through it the way he combs his toes through the sand. Nico's eyes are downcast and he feels how intensely the other's self loathing burns. It practically radiates off him in waves. Percy thinks if they were stood anywhere else, in a patch of green for example and not on a beach, the things around him would wither and turn black. But beaches, well, they're the ocean's past long dead and worn down and gifted to the land. There wasn't anything for him to wither.

"Hey— don't do that."

"Don't do what?" Nico's voice is different but for a moment Percy thinks he can hear remnants of the little boy in the labyrinth.

Percy steps forward and reaches up, brushing his thumb across the other boy's forehead. It's scrunched up, worry lines creasing his pale skin. Percy, like a child, pushes the skin until its free of creases. It doesn't immediately get a laugh from the other, at first it's just a roll of the eyes and then a snort. "Careful you might get a kink in your neck," Nico finally mutters back with a laugh.

Percy is only mildly offended at how much taller Nico is than himself. He is only slightly more offended at the comment, but after a roll of his own eyes to the back of his head, he brings his gaze back to fix on the other teen's dark eyes.

"You don't get to do that. You don't get to stand here thinking bad things about yourself. You did what you had to do." Percy pauses because as soon as he's said it, he realizes that it's not true.

"I didn—"

His hands lift to hold Nico's face between them, his fingers in his hair and along his jaw. "You did _more_ than you had to do. Do you hear me?"

Because he went looking for the doors of death knowing where he might find them. He went to the one place on earth that no one should have to go and he'd done it out of some twisted sense of duty to the son of Poseidon. He couldn't tell him who he was. He couldn't reassure his mother. So he'd done the most stupid, thoughtless, selfless, heroically brave thing instead to make amends. Percy hadn't realized that at the time, newly returned memories, and in the midst of a new prophecy. He had been resentful. He hadn't had perspective.

Percy pressed their foreheads together. Nico's eyes widen and his breath leaves him in a surprised gasp, but he doesn't look away when Percy asks him again if he hears him. Nico nods and after a second he even smiles. It's the slow kind, a little hesitant, a little reserved, like he's not quite sure how to do it but it happens anyway. Percy thinks it fits this more angular, more grown up version of his face.

"Okay." Nico finally murmurs and maybe his voice isn't that unlike the sea or the shadows.

"Okay." Percy echoes.

They pull their feet out from the wet sand, Nico catching his hand, and walk further down the beach with their fingers intertwined.

They wander until their legs burn from walking in the sand, each step forward also a little bit of a slip back. Nico is not as coordinated in the dunes as Percy and on more than one occasion he practically falls, nearly dragging Percy down with him each time. The son of Poseidon doesn't let go of his hand; he's half convinced he's the only reason that the other teenager is still standing. He's like Bambi on ice with his long limbs, nearly a foot taller than he was before. The sudden growth spurt agrees with him but it's clear he's still adjusting.

"I don't have adequate foot wear!" He tries to argue as he trips again. They've wandered further up the beach and away from the tide but as Nico trips again he falls down onto the soft white sand sparkling under the moonlight and with his dark hair fanned out around him as he rolls over onto his back, face flushed with laughter, he looks like his name sake. Percy drops beside the other and the sand molds to his body with barely any fussing.

"Be honest, di Angelo. You're like Bambi on ice."

"I don't even know what that means." Nico says as he rolls onto his side, propping his head up on his arm as his gaze meets Percy's.

Percy rolls his eyes to himself as he stares up at the sky above them. A star trails across the sky, there one moment and gone the next. Percy wishes he could stay like this, stay where it's peaceful.

"Percy, it's time to wake up."

"I just woke up," he argues. He's not sure why the statements feels like it means something _more_.

Percy turns his head, meeting the other's deep brown eyes. They're only a few inches apart. Close enough that he can feel Nico's breath when the other exhales, but not so close that they're touching. They had dropped the hold on one another's hands when they'd fallen to the sand. A few dark strands of hair fall across Nico's face, they don't fully obstruct the view but it's just enough that Percy can't _completely_ see the other's eyes. He reaches up and tucks the strands out of Nico's face. He doesn't miss the way Nico leans into his touch (or the way he likes when the other teen does).

"You need to wake up, Percy." But his voice doesn't sound as stern.

Percy's fingers linger just behind Nico's ear buried in his soft waves and their gaze is locked the entire time. For a second, Nico looks at him questioningly but he's not sure what question the other is trying to ask him. Finally, Percy answers the silence, hoping he's not too far off.

"I'd miss this."

Nico's lips curl up in the corners slowly, that small awkward stretched-a-little-too-tight smile because the boy was so out of practice but when he does smile now he means it, and it softens the pronounced lines of his seventeen-or-eighteen year old face. "You're an idiot," he huffs but there's the breathy tinge of a laugh. A hand closes over Percy's— it's larger than his own since Nico's miraculous growth spurt— and guides it down towards his mouth where the faintest brush of lips pass across the palm of his hand. Just as quickly and it's over and Percy's hand is back by his side though he's sure that quite possibly every hair on his body is stood on end.

"You love me."

Nico rolls his eyes but he smiles just a little wider. For a moment his hand hangs in the air as if debating before he finally decides, and his hand moves forward, fingers brushing along the Percy's jaw until they come to that place, finger's in his hair, cupping his jaw. "Wake up, Percy." He opens his mouth to argue but Nico shakes his head. "You're not really here."

"Don't be stupid…"

"I don't want you to go," he sighed, "but she's waiting for you."

Percy blinks and before he can ask 'who' (and protest that he doesn't want to go anywhere) the soft shimmer of the sandy beach, and the gentle waves of dark hair are replaced with the sort of darkness that is not peppered with constellations and falling stars. The ground beneath him is cold and the ocean has been replaced with a river. She's waiting for him there, sitting upon the bank with water lilies weaved into the thick cat tails and reads of her hair. She smiles at him softly but he pushes himself to his feet, wary of this goddess.

 _Percy Jackson,_ she said with a voice that bubbled inside of his head, like the water that made him feel so at home. It tickled his consciousness. _I have something for you._

He didn't have to speak for her to understand his skepticism. Gods and goddesses called for him all of the time. That usually meant something bad but from the way her eyes softened at the edges as she gazed upon him, he didn't feel any malice. She was the embodiment of promises made and whilst he'd failed to keep a great many of his, Percy trusted that she wouldn't offer anything she didn't mean.

 _You are cautious, little one, but there is no reason. Soon you will rest just here._ The flowing water of her robe rippled with tiny phosphorescent fish and plants as she motioned to the mossy riverbed beside her. _I have something you need, something you are missing. A message. An understanding._

Percy's eyes widened.

 _Come quickly._

He opened his mouth to ask but the name gets caught.

"Nico!"

His voice was a cracked whisper as green eyes opened and started up at the endless darkness above him. His heart hammered in his chest and he tried to reach up to touch it but his left arm merely twitched, raising a little but the weakness and impossibility of moving it in the way he expected it to hit him like ice cold water to his face. Blinking, Percy turned his head and as he pushed himself up with his good arm, Percy noticed the stars that dotted the sky. There was no acrid clouds churning overhead. His fingers closed around the edge of the crow's nest as he glanced down across the rest of the _Argos II_.

Percy had never been afraid of heights but he was a long way up.

"You were sleep walking, son."

The voice just behind him frightened him enough that he nearly toppled out of the crow's nest as he whipped around to find the source of the voice. Floating nearly the crow's nest was the washed out shape of a spirit. From the dress, he was a sailor when he lived.

"Who are you… how did you get here?"

"Your friend called for me. I don't get many visitors, this far out, you see. I was only happy to oblige."

"My friend— I don't understand."

"Your friend followed you up. He made sure you didn't hurt yourself. Quite easy to fall to your death if you're not careful on the ropes— even easier when you're asleep. Can't say I've seen many a man do just that." The spirit ran a hand along his long dark beard and gave a shake of his head. "I've seen men sleepwalk, son, but I've never seen anyone sleep _climb_. Gave him a real fright. He about lost his mind until you came to rest just here. I thought perhaps once you were resting he'd be a bit more for conversation but, well, wasn't the first time I've been disappointed. Don't get many chances at conversation so far out to see, I'm sure you understand. But, I suppose I'm used to being disappointed— he wasn't much for chatter."

"Him?" Percy's voice was soft even to his own ears trying to focus the spirit. Keeping up was near impossible but then again, talking to ghosts wasn't exactly his thing.

Before the spirit could answered, Small Bob chirruped and crawled into the crow's nest with Percy. The demonic cat glanced at the spirit and chirruped again (Percy wasn't even aware that was a noise that cats could make) before making a circle around. The sailor ghost ran his hand along the spartus' spine and the cat purred before abandoning the spirit in favor of Percy. Small Bob crawled up his front and bumped his head with Percy's forehead and meowed and fretted over him.

"Were you worried about me?" He smiled and pet the cat, tickled under his chin and was rewarded with Small Bob placing his tiny kitten nose against Percy's nose. For a demon hell cat, Small Bob was nothing like the ones he'd encountered before (he and Bob had that in common, the exception rather than the rule). Percy continued to fuss his friend and was rewarded with a mix of purrs and the cat kneading at his shirt. It caused holes more often than not but Percy didn't really mind.

When he glanced back up the spirit was gone.

Percy ran his thumb along the silver skull ring circling his ring finger and thought to himself, _so strange._


	14. Some Words Are Better Left Unspoken

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 14

Some Words Are Better Left Unspoken, Some Words You Can't Take Back

Annabeth

* * *

She stood staring, her mouth open, watching as her boyfriend retreated. No, not her boyfriend. Someone else, she thought. Someone who might wear his face and use his voice, but someone who had taken her place. Her Percy would never do that to her, would never yell at her, would never make her feel like that. Annabeth stood watching as the son of Poseidon retreated and she was frozen in place. She couldn't make herself move.

The others had scattered, soundless and out of sight. They had witnessed something none of them were meant to see (something that wasn't meant to happen) and Annabeth was grateful. She didn't want to see the pity in their eyes, didn't want to see the way they regarded her after the whole thing. She thought she was alone, arms crossed over her chest trying to keep all the pieces from falling out while she caught her breath, but a hand soon rested on her shoulder. When she glanced up she didn't see the green of the sea but the blue of the sky and her heart slowed its racing just a little.

"Are you okay?"

"I don't know what I am." She whispered.

"Why don't we get you cleaned off?"

"He'll be— I don't think—" Annabeth's mouth felt wrong. It couldn't quite form words the way it was supposed to so how was she supposed to let Jason know? Percy would flee to the bathroom, to the comfort of the water, the hot steam. The shower room might have separate stalls but she couldn't be in there. Anywhere that Percy might be was somewhere Annabeth couldn't handle right then.

Was the world tilting? The daughter of wisdom hadn't realized until she was meeting Jason's gaze that everything wasn't exactly steady and it sent her already sensitive stomach rolling. Or maybe that was the sudden change in altitude as they rocketed away from the ocean (before anything else could go wrong). The son of Jupiter's arm slipped around her and when had Annabeth started falling? She was shaking, dizzy, and utterly drained. Weakness wasn't ever something to be shown to others and that sort of public emotional rollercoaster had about zapped everything she had. Whatever strong and together front she had been attempting to for Percy and for everyone (and, in truth, for herself) fled leaving only frayed nerves and fears exposed like live wires.

Jason didn't seem to shock easily though. Maybe the whole invulnerable to it son of Jupiter thing.

"Easy there. Come on, we're not going to the shower room."

She wanted to ask exactly what he meant but she was exhausted and the words wouldn't come. Everything in her was all strong-independent-woman-who-don't-need-nobody and girl-power but right then she was using all of her strength to keep her head up and her insides firmly insideof her instead of wrenching them on the deck. That was strength enough.

It turned out that what Jason meant by cleaning up was sequestering her to a private spot on the deck away from everyone else where he called her very own summer's rain cloud, the water warm against her skin, and she rinsed away the gore and goo that Percy had covered her in. Her hands scrubbed and scrubbed long passed the point of being clean— she had probably even polished a few of her blonde arm hairs away with the fervour— but she felt better. All that was left was the burn the clothes.

"Yeah, sorry, but I don't think I can do much for the clothes. I think those are probably more Leo's department— as in I'd recommend burning them."

"It's okay. Thank you."

Annabeth rung out her ponytail and looked up giving a nod and what she could muster of a small smile. Her eyes were puffy but she could pretend whatever they were leaking was a result of getting water in them, not her silently crying as she'd cleaned herself because of what her boyfriend had done.

Not your boyfriend, she reminded herself. That thing wasn't your boyfriend. That's whatever happened to him down there— that's something else.

"Do you want to— I don't know— do you want to talk or anything?"

Jason was a few inches taller than Percy, tanned skin (where his was sallow), eyes the color of the clearest skies (instead of the murkiest depths of untamed seas), strong arms and obvious muscles (not the swimmer's build fading to skeletal), but most importantly his expression was soft and open. Annabeth felt like she'd spent the last few days with Arachnae's wed spun tightly around her ankle, the weight of the monster willing her down to Tartarus with the pit's gaze focussing in on her. It wanted her. It wouldn't forgive her for escaping its grasp. Looking at Jason was like seeing the sun and finally being able to breathe again. She swallowed.

"I'm sorry— about all of that. I mean, will you tell the others? That I'm sorry… He isn't feeling well. He's not himself." She found a hundred excuses each one falling more quickly from her tongue than the last. Part of her knew better, but the other half of her was only human.

"If you need anything—"

"Thank you, Jason."

Because if she stayed she might say something she would regret. Her shoes squeaked and squelched as she ran off, disappearing from the deck back to her room. Annabeth could feel their eyes watching her as she ran and tears came once again. The door slammed, the noise making her jump, and her soggy shoes let out a large belch and she laughed so hard her whole body shook, her eyes blurred with tears, until her shoulders shook with sobs. No matter how tightly she wrapped her arms around herself she felt like pieces of her might slip through and fall to the floor.

He's wrong. He's broken, in one breath.

Don't think like that. He needs time. This isn't him, it isn't.

Hiccups rocked her body as the daughter of wisdom stood up and stripped off her soaked clothing. She dropped her shoes in the corner but the garments she thrust in the trash. They were stained copper and still smelled of death. She didn't want that anywhere near her. Annabeth dried herself on a towel, scrubbing until her skin turned red, and then only when she was sure that she didn't have any of it left on her did she dare to get dressed. One thing at a time, she thought. First dry. Then dress. And then… and then…

Annabeth's grey eyes stung and when she glanced at herself in the mirror. They were red and swollen and she looked like someone else. Not like a daughter of Athena. Not like Annabeth Chase. Not like a hero. She lifted a hand and scrubbed at them, wiping the tears that clung to her cheeks. As quickly as she wiped them away they were replaced with more; each blink and tears fell. Some even slipped along the length of her nose before they dripped onto her hand. Whatever that was, it hadn't been her Percy. It was something else entirely and so she held her breath as she attempted to steady her breathing and banish the hiccups, keep her muscles still.

It was difficult but it wasn't impossible. Just like most things.

It's difficult but not impossible. That's what all of this is, Annabeth: difficult but not impossible.

Annabeth tossed the coin into the spray of water. There was a tiny fountain in her room and she'd brought it in case they needed to contact Chiron or Camp or anyone else. In this case, she just wanted to hear from her friend.

"Show me Calypso."

It takes a moment but an image flickers to life and she can tell it's the inside of a luxury yacht because of the deep colored wood. The image pitches back and forth, a little unsteadily, and Annabeth assumes that the ship has hit rough waters. In the background of the image she sees dark hair and instantly knows it to be Reyna. The praetor is fierce and part of her instantly feels foolish— a daughter of Athena crying over a boy. A daughter who should be strong and above these sorts of things… it had seemed so important a minute ago.

Oh gods, I can't let her see me like this.

They'd gotten off on the wrong foot to start with when they'd arrived on the Argos II looking to save Percy— her Percy. The Greeks might not have leaders in the way the Romans had praetor— the closest thing being heads of cabins— but she knows that as one of the older campers who's been on a number of quests, she's as close to an equal as Reyna will find in the other camp. She's trusting the other to bring the statue of her mother home to the Greeks and in return, Reyna is expecting her (and the other six members of their party) to stop Gaea. Annabeth rubbed at her eyes again, grabbed her baseball cap and pulled it a little lower on her head. It cast just enough of a shadow that she was sure the other girl wouldn't be able to make out her tear swollen eyes.

"Reyna— is Calypso there?"

Her voice is a little hoarser than she would have liked it but that could be anything. A cold. Lack of sleep. Being sucker punched in the wind pipe. Normal demigod sort of stuff.

The praetor snaps to attention, her eyes catching the rainbow message and she walks closer to the image. "Annabeth— I wasn't expecting to hear from you. Calypso is—"

"—right here." The sound of her friend's voice floats in from somewhere out of the frame. A moment later and Annabeth sees a hand come to rest against the praetor's arm. For a moment Reyna looks as if she is going to argue but Annabeth catches the end of a glance that Calypso shares with the other girl. Whatever it means, the demigod bows her head.

"I'll go check on Coach Hedge. It's almost time to relieve him of his shift."

Annabeth knows that Reyna is gone when she hears a door slide closed. Calypso sits in front of the rainbow message, her cinnamon and caramel streaked hair loose from its signature plait. It is so much longer freed from its constraints and cascades down her shoulders in thick waves. For as beautiful as she looks without trying, her almond eyes look tired, the dark smudge of rings beginning to form beneath them.

"Annabeth, how are you? Is everything okay?"

"Everything's great." It's automatic, the lie that comes forward, but she hesitates as soon as she's said it. Her hand lifts to fiddle with the cap she is wearing and folds the bill making it a little tighter, a little more snug, trying to keep it just right. "Everything is a mess," she finally adds with a quiet sigh.

"Percy?"

"Yes."

As much as she had wanted to talk to Calypso, as much as she thought maybe the Goddess might understand her frustration and hurt, the daughter of Athena is stuck. Talking about feelings wasn't the same as talking about facts— they were subjective and often times foolish and entirely irrational. It was so far outside of her comfort zone that it made her flesh pop up in goosebumps. Finally, Annabeth sighed and leaned forward, her elbows resting against her lap. "Everything's a mess… he's acting entirely different. He's himself one moment and then he's jumping into the sea, tearing apart a sea serpent, and flaunting around covered in its blood the next. But he can't see it— he can't see that he's being… that what he's doing isn't okay. He's not—"

"—acting like himself?" Calypso fixed her with a knowing look, her lips curled in the corners in a smile but it was the sad kind. One of a girl who watched lover after lover sail away from her never to return, heart breaking each time. She'd even watched Percy sail away one of those times.

"I know it sounds ridiculous, Cal, but some of the things that he's done since he's been back… he's scaring the others. When he first woke up I don't know he thought he saw but he nearly killed Hazel, Jason, Piper and myself. Leo said he attacked a woman in Olympia and some of the things that he's said…" she shook her head and looked up.

"Is he scaring you?"

Annabeth stared, slack mouthed and blinking at the goddess. She wrapped her arms around herself and nodded.

"Good. Not good that you're scared but good that you're not lying to yourself about it."

"I wouldn't—"

"You would. Anyone would. But it's better if you don't. Annie… he needs time. Coming back from what he did? The things he saw down there? The things he probably had to do…" a shiver wracked the goddess and she lifted a hand to the bridge of her nose, pinching there, as if the thought not only made her sick but hurt her head. "It's horrific for monsters and gods. It shouldn't be possible for demigods."

The anxiety eating at her stomach gnawed harder, growled a little louder, and for once the daughter of Athena didn't feel like she could plan her way out of this. There wasn't an answer to be had no matter which way she approached the problem. She held herself a little tighter. "What should I do?" she whispered.

"Has he talked to anyone?"

"He's talking—"

"—I don't mean like that. I mean has he talked to anyone?"

"No." She had never felt the weight of two letters as much as she did those ones.

Calypso nodded, her features softening as she gazed into the rainbow message at her friend. "The coach and I did all we could to fix his arm, stop an infection and prevent it from festering, so it wouldn't poison his body. But it's up to you and the others to make sure that what happened doesn't poison his mind."

"What do I do?"

"Honestly?" Calypso looked tired. Annabeth couldn't help but notice she was still pinching at the bridge of her nose and her normally sun kissed skin looked just a little green tinged. Come to think of it, the lights in the yacht were very dim. One of the lamps Annabeth could see had a cloth draped over it, defusing the light and softening it. Worry over Percy won out, pushing anything else to the side.

"Honestly."

"You need to start by accepting that this Percy, the one that came back, he's your Percy now."

"He's not—"

"—You need to hear me, Annabeth." She fixed a weighted gaze on the other girl and offered her a small smile, sympathetic but also firm. "He can be better, but he can't be the same. You're too clever to be this naive."

"I'm not…"

"—Not what? Not being foolish?"

"It's just that… I knew things would be bad, Calypso. I was prepared for bad, but this…"

"Not what you were expecting, was it?" Calypso's smile only looked sadder when Annabeth shook her head; she'd hoped for anything else. "The men who return from war are not the same as the boys that left to fight it." She was silent for a moment and Annabeth blinked, unsure what to say, hardly able to move. Calypso gave a knowing nod of her head and that haunted smile, the one the demigod imagine was borne of all the men she waved off home as they carried with them a piece of her heart (knowingly or not).

"I'm sorry, Annie, but I need to lay down. We'll talk soon, okay? Call me if you need anything." Before Annabeth could get another word out, the goddess waved her hand through the mist and sent it running, leaving her alone with her thoughts and a boulder lodged firmly in her throat.

At some point the boulder in her throat and the aching in her chest gave out under the tirelessly running pistons of her mind. Eventually she fell asleep, dreamless and without rest, until a knocking came at her door. Annabeth expected to see the son of Jupiter checking in on her, tall and bright and warm, worrying about her. Instead she found Percy, slumped and dark and haunted, stepping inside near her. He was clean and he no longer smelled of copper but she had to push down the way bile bit at the back of her throat. The memory is just fresh, she'd convinced herself. She'd shut the door with a little too much force before the skeletal cat could run in after him, always chasing at his heels like a vivid reminder of everything he'd been through and all the ways that he'd changed. Annabeth was only too happy to slam the door on it. Let it not exist for a little while.

And it mattered, didn't it? Because Percy had apologized and he'd said the right things and for a few minutes she was positive that it was her Percy standing before her. He's not gone, not totally different, no matter what Calypso says. It hadn't been perfect and it had been more than a little awkward but it'd been months since they'd truly had any alone time together. And even then, most of that was at camp (where you were never truly alone) or in the city with one visiting the other on holidays (she'd talked her father into visiting New York over Thanksgiving and they'd had a massive Chase-Jackson-Blofis celebration).

But thinking about their future? Helping him to make sure he graduated with her? Her mind was off and running and where there had been dark things and anxiety and dread, she replaced them with bright things like the future and the possibility of them moving to New Rome together and attending college. They'd share a small apartment, she'd take a job working at a book store between classes, and Percy could help with the horses and Pegasi. It'd work out. They'd live through this just like the last war and they'd find each other and mend on the other side of it. Like last time.

When she'd invited him to stay, she'd felt lighter and more like herself, her heart beating a little faster when he'd taken her hand and said 'yes'. She'd slept more soundly laying in Percy Jackson's arms than she had in months.

Her heart was hammering in her ears like a jackhammer chugging away as it tried to break through concrete. Annabeth sat up, hand over her heart, as if she might be able to hold the thing inside of her chest. But of course she didn't feel anything more than her pulse thrumming far too quickly. Grey eyes glanced around the room and she saw everything but also nothing. The lamp atop the small desk was on chasing the shadows into the furthest corner of her room. The spot on the bed next to her was rumpled but her Seaweed Brain wasn't there. The door to her room was wide open.

He was somewhere and he was in trouble, probably in the throw of night terrors, if the ship's lurching was anything to go by. Annabeth bumped her elbows and stubbed her toes as she bounced from one wall to another until she had made her way on deck. Jason had been looking windswept and she'd practically skidded overboard because of the icy assault was fast freezing to the ship's deck. But that wasn't the worst of it. No, the worst was not knowing. Not knowing where Percy was, not knowing if he was okay, not knowing what things haunted him when he closed his eyes, what things now lived in the dark for him to be so afraid of it. The daughter of Athena was used to questions, but not ones to which she couldn't uncover the answers. It was her own personal version of hell.

Her heart hadn't stopped attempting hammering at her temples until she found him, or rather, until Jason found him. She stood next to the heir of the king of God's and craned her head backwards. There, some thirty or forty feet above in the crow's nest, was Percy Jackson. He didn't even look disturbed or hurt or any of the possible things she'd run through her mind. Instead, he took his time climbing down the rope later until his feet were back on the deck. Small Bob jumped the remaining ten feet (because of course that little demon was trailing after him— he as always trailing after Percy) and landed on her boyfriend's shoulder.

"Morning guys. What're you doing up this early?"

Annabeth balked.

"Looking for you, dude."

Percy attempted to shrug but stopped mid motion as Small Bob let out a huff as if to remind the other that he was there. "Apparently I sleepwalk now." He didn't seem nearly as concerned by the statement as he should have been. As if reading her thoughts (she was sure they were written across her face as clear as a storm in the sky), "Don't worry, SB was on the case." He gave the small skeletal cat a scratch under the chin earning him an affectionate nose bump to the ear in return. "And some sailor ghost? I'm starting to think I might be haunted."

It was clearly meant to be a joke but Annabeth's stomach churned. She swallowed.

"I'm glad you're okay. I woke up and you weren't there… I was worried."

Jason looked away, his cheeks pink, and she thought he might have blushed for her. She wasn't sure why. Percy must have noticed because he was giving the other son of a big three a look of daggers. It was a little too much like the son of Poseidon was sizing up the son of Jupiter, a little more like caveman arguing over territory than defending her honour. It didn't escape her notice the way his hand hoovered around his pocket. Riptide might not magical reappear there any more because of whatever had happened in Tartarus but seeing his fingers resting there made her skin itch.

"What's up, man? You're going a little red in the face. Something you want to say?"

"Not really."

Annabeth slipped her arm through Percy's good one and began steering him towards the rear of the ship before nothing— whatever nothing was— could turn into something. Annabeth shot a glance over her shoulder, apology written all over her face, and Jason just nodded. He stayed watching them for a moment as if waiting to gage if— what exactly?

To see if I'm safe. To make sure everything is okay.

Annabeth immediately felt guilty for thinking it, but instinctually she knew that it was true. Jason was waiting to see if she'd be safe with Percy. A few extra steps away from him and the testosterone must have died down because she could feel the way his muscles, tight as coils, eased just a little. Percy might have lost weight down in Tartarus but he hadn't lost muscle mass. She could feel it firm beneath her touch and she had no doubt that while he didn't rival Jason in size, he was just as lethal.

The demigoddess turned around and held more tightly to Percy's good arm ignoring the way Small Bob meowed at her and batted at her blonde pony tail. They a walked towards the rear of the ship and she tried, honestly, she did, but eventually she batted back at the cat scolding him. Percy furrowed his brows and gave her a questioning look which she knew to mean c'mon he's just a kitten, lay off. I

"I'm just glad you're okay."

Percy nodded giving a quiet hum under his breath rather than saying anything. At least until he noticed the hail melting along the deck. He kicked at it and gave a quick glance up to her. "That was me, huh?" Annabeth nodded but he didn't look worried or disturbed by the discovery. He didn't look much of anything; she felt that familiar cold taking root in the pit of her stomach. "It's pretty cool. I mean— ice storms and freezing water? That was never something I could do before."

"Is that something you learned how to do in—" she didn't know how to say Tartarus but Percy picked up on it without her finishing. He shook his head and Small Bob meowed as if backing up his response.

"Since I've been back. But I learned that I could do other things down there."

From the tone of his voice, she decided not to question it. Annabeth really didn't want to know. She was saved from the awkwardness of attempting to segue from that to something less nerve frazzling by a more-rumpled-than-usual looking Leo who emerged from below with Piper not far behind. The daughter of Aphrodite avoided Annabeth's gaze but that was honestly just fine with her. She had enough to deal with at the moment.

"Hey guys— meet downstairs in ten. Breakfast is on me," she said while patting the cornucopia that hung at her side. "I'm going to go wake Frank and Hazel up."

Annabeth opened her mouth to say she wasn't hungry but Percy beat her to it.

"You think that thing could pop out something blue besides blueberries?"

"There's only one way to find out," she said with a smile growing. Whatever nervous waiver she'd had in her voice when she announced a group breakfast was gone. Annabeth held tighter to Percy's hand, positive she saw Leo give the kelp-for-brains a grateful smile and nod of his head.

"I'm not hungry." She half whispered, turning to face Percy.

"No one said you had to eat." It was impossible to shake off the feeling of his gaze or the annoyance tainting his voice. Annabeth nodded and followed him inside.

Frank was helping himself to an adequate portion of pancakes and bacon while Hazel still looked half asleep sitting beside him. Or maybe she looked like she hadn't been able to sleep… she was quieter than before, ever since Percy was back. Ever since Nico… Annabeth looked away. Jason was sat on one side of Piper and Leo on the other. The two didn't appear to be as comfortable together as they had when they were together but the proximity piqued the daughter of wisdom's interest. The former praetor hadn't been able to look her in the eyes since their whole fiasco and they'd hardly said more than two words to each other since then, except out of politeness or necessity. Annabeth pushed the pancakes about on her plate because she'd cut them into mouth size bites but the thought of eating them turned her stomach sour. Even if her stomach growled. Not eating them was a matter of principle. She'd pick up more actual food when the seven next set down in a city because she might not have much for money, but she'd learned a thing or two about shoplifting when it was necessary. Anything was better than having to rely upon Piper to feed them.

Percy, on the other hand, was having no problem.

"Is that a joke?" She asked arching an eyebrow and glanced down at the bowl in front of him.

At first she hadn't been sure what the rounded dark blue fruit the size of his hand had been when Piper had handed it to him. The cornucopia had only smoked slightly as it'd produced the item but Annabeth couldn't recognise it. She had thought it might be a giant blueberry but it wasn't delicate to the touch and the skin was far too thick. Percy had struggled to rip the thing in half with the use of only one hand and Annabeth had been too flabbergasted to help. Instead Leo had reached over, cut the thing in half and then quarters and with fingers nimble and quick, had freed the juicy seeds from the blue pomegranate into a bowl before offering it back to the son of Poseidon. The bottom of the bowl had a shallow pool of nectar and it made some seedy fruit salad type concoction he chose to eat with his fingers instead of using a spoon.

She supposed the nectar was because his bad arm was hurting him but she was too gobsmacked to ask.

Annabeth had never in her life seen Percy eat a fruit, let alone a pomegranate. And not one covered in nectar. What would that even taste like?

"Is what a joke?" Hazel finally asked from the other side of Percy.

"It's noth—" Annabeth wasn't sure how to explain herself as blackness gnawed at the pit of her stomach.

"Shhh—" he interrupted, hushing Annabeth as Piper began to talk. If her stomach had been sinking before, it dropped straight out from under her. It only got worse from there. The daughter of wisdom's mouth filled with the taste of bile and her chest hurt, invisible bands constricting around her. Breathing through her nose didn't help anything because her stomach wasn't the only thing to have dropped out, but her heart was threatening to do the same.

Piper finished her announcement, kaleidoscope eyes wary as they stopped on Annabeth but if she was hoping to find comfort there, she didn't have any to offer. There was a time where she would have done anything to be selected to go on a quest of her own. It was what everyone strived for— to prove yourself. To prove yourself worthy of your heritage. Maybe make a name for yourself that wasn't just a connection to the deity half responsible for your existence. But she didn't want this. Not if it meant having to go with Piper, someone she couldn't trust and who, frankly, didn't have her shit together. Annabeth would be better off going by herself.

Think quick.

Annabeth couldn't flat out refuse to go on a mission as part of their quest. But she could refute the grounds on which Piper was dictating they go. Besides, two people wasn't wise. It didn't make sense. It wasn't because she couldn't go on a quest with the daughter of love but it wasn't smart.

"Two's not a good number," she finally said. "We should bring someone else to better our chances." Annabeth kept her voice calm as she spoke, glancing among the others. She almost even made it to Piper.

"I've already offered," Leo echoed, but she knew which side he would take and it wasn't hers.

"It can't be anyone else. It has to be us."

"And how do you know?"

"She had a vision," Hazel said slowly, as if repeating something Annabeth must have missed.

The blonde shook her head and readjusted the Yankees cap atop her head, tightening her pony tail until it sat a little higher. Just something to do with her hands. "Visions aren't really something we can trust right now, can we? Prophecies have dried up. Apollo's children haven't had any luck and Rachel can't see anything… how do we know this isn't some trap that Gaea has laid for us? It seems convenient, doesn't it?"

"Of course it's a trap. It's always a trap." Percy answered none-too-helpfully. He popped another pomegranate seed into his mouth and, out of the corner of her sight, was sure he rolled his eyes as he stared down into his bowl.

"Then we especially could use another set of hands." Annabeth added.

"Whether we like it or not, it has to be us. We were the ones there in the vision. There wasn't anyone else." Piper stood her ground and though Annabeth didn't meet her multicoloured eyes, she could feel the other demigoddess' gaze on her. "They know that we're coming, anyhow. Whether it's two of us or seven of us, they know that we're coming. At least with two of us we can be quick and quiet."

Annabeth opened her mouth but she was cut off by her boyfriend.

"I think she's right." Percy's words were a punch in her gut (she struggled to breathe) but the others murmured their agreement. Annabeth was outvoted… about herself. She barely heard him as he continued, "Surprise is out the window, stealth makes the most sense." His fingers were stained a bluish purple from the unnatural hue of the pomegranate, like the colour of the bags under Nico's eyes when he dropped the two of them onto the deck of the Argos II leaving Percy hanging over the cliff to Tartarus. The colour of the bags under the eyes of the boy who hadn't saved her for her own sake. It wasn't the colour of exhaustion or haunting glances or impending death— it should be, but it wasn't. It was the colour of something sour taking hold in her gut she couldn't quite name and she wanted to cry. She was a daughter of Athena, strong and steadfast so she bit her tongue and blinked back the tears burning at the back of her eyes. Annabeth gripped Percy's knee so hard that he eventually elbowed her in the ribs with his good arm to get her to leg go. The arm with the fingers stained blue. She shuddered. Whatever he saw on her face, he had the good sense to get up and motion for her to follow. No one followed them and she would be glad later that they at least had that much sense about that, even if they were blind to everything else.

When they reached the deck up above, Annabeth's hand rubbed at her chest as she willed her lungs to fill. It wasn't that they weren't listening exactly, just that they got to a certain point and didn't feel like they could get any more because they stuttered and before she wanted to she found herself exhaling. They were surrounded by open skies and a warm breeze tickled the skin at the back of her neck forewarning of how hot the day would get as it stretched on but Annabeth couldn't quite get the air to fill her lungs.

"Come with us." She finally gasped but Percy looked like she'd spoken mandarin. "It can't be just the two of us."

"What're you talking about?"

"I can't do this quest if it's just the two of us, Percy. Her charmspeak is out of control. She nearly killed Jason while you were gone— he jumped overboard. If he wasn't a son of Jupiter…"

"Jason can take care of himself." Percy's voice was ice down the back of her neck. It made her think of earlier when his fingers had hoovered around his pocket, toe to toe with Jason in some absurd territorial standoff, like he might reach for Riptide if only the pen were there.

"That's not the point! She's out of control, Percy. You weren't there. Jason could have died if he hadn't snapped out of it…"

"So what? The whole world is going insane, some of us have been possessed by evil spirits or influenced by a god, or just gone fucking nuts. She's obviously sorry from the way she's been tip-toeing around the two of you. Not like either of you have given her a chance from what I've seen."

"So what!?" Annabeth couldn't stop the way her voice raised an octave. The tide was threatening to drag her out to sea and the boy who should have been able to clam it, who should have been on her side, stood there watching her struggle. Worse than that, he had practically yanked any chance of a life vest away from her. "So what!? She'll get us killed or captured!"

For a moment it's silent and foolishly she lets herself hope. Percy will realise that she's right, he'll understand that it's not only because she's afraid but because they can't trust her. They can't trust whatever the mission is with someone who is so unstable. She'll risk everything and set them back. They're too close and the deadline is breathing down their necks.

"Do you hear yourself? That is an actual possibility every single day, whacked out powers or not. This isn't any different."

"I don't trust her, that's what's different! And it's not just me… Jason doesn't trust her either." Because it wasn't just her. It wasn't. Annabeth's arms clutched around her chest forming a cage to try and keep the pounding of her heart strictly inside her chest but she didn't know if she'd be so lucky with her stomach. It felt like it was climbing up the back of her throat. But it wasn't just her. It wasn't. She wasn't making it up.

Percy's eyebrows climbed up his forehead and for a second she thought to herself, I've gotten through. He understands. I'm not just scared for myself, I'm scared for everyone. For the quest. I'm not saying that I won't go, but it can't just be the two of us. But whatever quiet might have accompanied the rising of his eyebrows is shattered by the way his head tilted back and he laughed, a gnarled and dark sound.

"You have got to be fucking kidd— do you even heard yourself, Annabeth?"

Steel eyes narrowed as she watched Percy try to raise his hands to run them through his hair but one of them can't, it was too wounded, too weak, even healed as it was and it was clear that the limited range of motion wasn't improving; it would be his new normal. He growled in frustration— at her? At his arm? At both? The latter was most likely as the hand on Percy's good arm clawed at his dark hair and he spun on his heel. Annabeth stood unmoving as he took a few steps away from her. Inside her chest, Annabeth's heart drummed louder and she can feel her senses heighten, a hair trigger of a fight-or-flight reflex that was stuck somewhere between the two ever since Percy had been back. She'd like to say it was tension bubbling up in her gut, not fear, but the adrenaline that surged through her was waiting for him to do something. Snap. That's all he did since he'd been back.

"What?" She tried to keep her tone level but she was losing her patience with him. Hestia's hearth, she was losing patience with herself!

"You don't want to go because you're afraid of Piper's charm-speak." He said without bothering to turn around. Percy spoke to the scenery more than he spoke to Annabeth but she could picture the expression he wore in her mind's eye. Hand over his eyes, brows scrunched, lips pressed into a thin bloodless line. From his tone of voice, she was sure he would have made air-quotes around 'afraid' if he'd had had the full use of both hands. "If you're so afraid, why don't you go ask your new boyfriend to come with you. He was pretty quiet this morning, but I'm sure he'd jump at the chance to rescue you."

"What's what supposed to mean?" Annabeth's anger began to bubble up as her eyes narrowed. She stepped forward and without thinking shoved his shoulder. "What is that supposed to mean!?"

Percy spun around and she had never seen an expression like it on his face before. "It means I might not have seen what her messed up charmpseak looks like but I've seen the way he looks at you since I've been back."

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

"This morning?"

"What about this morning? He was helping me look for you! I woke up and I didn't know where you were."

"Right… and you didn't notice the way he looked fucking embarrassed and heartsick over your honour. You woke up and I wasn't there... He practically crawled out of your skin at the thought."

"Do you even hear yourself? You sound so fucking ridiculous!" She cried, any thought of tears and fear quickly boiled away by the audacity the son of Poseidon had to stand in front of her and make the most ludicrous allegations she'd ever heard. Jason!? Offended for her honour!? It was the stupidest thing she'd ever heard.

"So he hasn't been your knight in shining arming since I've been gone? He hasn't been the shoulder for you to lean on in case your boyfriend didn't make it back? Hades helm, Annabeth, I'm back and he still hasn't backed off. Piper messing up was probably a really convenient excuse for him to drop her because he clearly has his sights on you. I lost an arm not my fucking sight. The way he looks at you…"

Ares could have touched down on the deck of the Argos II for the way her heart was hammering in her ears and everything went red. Annabeth had been made in her life. She'd been furious. She'd even been so angry a few times that she had burst into tears because it was that or she might have started turning over everything in her sight and wouldn't have stopped until there was nothing left.

Annabeth did not cry nor did she lash out at anything in convenient distance on deck. Instead, she gritted her teeth and spat, "Isn't any different than the way Nico looked at you." She spun on her heel and stormed back below deck.


	15. Percy's Very Public Sensory Meltdown

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 15

Welcome To Percy's Very Public Sensory Meltdown (Or Things Escalate Quickly)

Percy

* * *

Percy never really got the expression seeing red. No one _saw_ red. It was a color, for sure, but seeing a random color just because you were pissed off? Sure, he'd been angry. It was sort of impossible _not_ to be furious as he'd gotten older and understood more and more what Gabe was putting his mother through (because he would overlook himself every time). And he'd been really freaking frustrated like on the regular when he actually _tried_ and his teachers looked at him like he was lukewarm puke they'd found after their cats chucked it in their shoes. It stressed him out and he couldn't always keep his cool, couldn't always keep the thoughts from spilling out of his mouth before he even knew that he thought them, couldn't always stop himself from doing something stupid and reckless and impulsive.

Seeing red wasn't exactly right.

Percy barely saw anything, hardly registered what was in front of him. Annabeth's blonde ponytail retreated from view and he'd clenched his fist so tight he was pretty sure his knuckles popped. His feet must have carried him back to the dining area because when he looked up he could see Piper, Jason, Hazel, Frank and Leo grouped around the remnants of their breakfast. As if on cue, Jason's gaze lifted and glanced over Percy's shoulder.

 _He's looking for Annabeth._

The thought lit a new fire in his stomach but he didn't say anything.

"So I was thinking that we could—"

 _Don't, Percy. Don't._ The conversation was lost to him.

Percy dropped down back into his seat and glared at the bowl of remaining pomegranate seeds and nectar before him. Everyone else's food had been cleaned up but his was still there. Either that was a really polite thing, or they were worried that it might set him off because they'd gotten rid of his bowl before he was finished. The thought should annoy him but there were other things that were taking precedent at the moment. _She has no idea what she's talking about._ Because all of that stuff about Nico? Totally un-fucking-called for. He pushed at his bowl but didn't bother eating anything else. It seemed stupid to be hungry when he'd gone the better part of a few weeks without food. Things didn't seem to set right in his stomach anymore. Or maybe he had royally fucked up his insides drinking the Phlegethon for so long.

 _Not like anyone's tested out the adverse side effects of prolonged exposure to Tartarus. I could grow three heads and a tail for all we know,_ he thought darkly. _Or drop dead tomorrow._

Small Bob stretched out across the table in front of him and dipped his head into the bowl, sniffing the remnants before shunning it. Apparently fruit wasn't his jam. Then again, nothing _really_ should have been his jam. It wasn't like he had intestines and yet the skeletal cat loved to catch himself a seagull and leave chewed up not-digested-goop behind him. Percy reached up and gave the kitten a scratch under the chin.

"I don't know. It's a really big area to search… and there wasn't anything in the dream? No symbol or landscape? Anything, no matter how small, might be helpful." Hazel mulled over a mug of steaming something and turned towards him as if to include Percy in the conversation.

"This would be better with Annabeth here."

 _Jason. Of course it's Jason._

And sure enough when he glanced up from where he'd probably been boring holes in the table, the son of Jupiter was staring straight at him. Now he's not exactly the smartest guy in the world but he's not stupid, either. Percy might not always pick up on social cues, or read the room, but the other demigod might as well have had a giant neon sign flashing "subtext! subtext! subtext!" But maybe if he doesn't bite, then the blonde won't say anything else.

Wrong.

"Where is she, Percy?"

For a moment he glanced around the table and he didn't see red. He just didn't quite see anything. He saw his friends. He saw the room. He saw Small Bob. But they're all really far away. It's like he was disconnected, floating somewhere off in the distance and they were all speaking under water, echoing and washed out. The pain in his injured shoulder flared like claws gripping at the damaged muscles in the elevator, and his molars were grinding. The light overhead doesn't quite flicker but the son of Poseidon can hear the unsteady output of energy like it was buzzing through his skull and all he could smell was the oil that almost always clung to Leo's clothes mixed with dirty socks. Someone seriously needed new sneakers. Percy clenched his fist on the table in front of him because through all of it, all he wanted to do was punch Jason in his stupid fucking face.

"Probably getting ready for the quest."

"She should really be here as part of the discussion. I mean, she's sort of crucial to strategy."

Percy rolled his eyes so hard he was half convinced for a second that they might have physically lodged themselves into the back of his skull for eternity. When he glanced up, though, the blue of the other's eyes staring him down while they studied his face took all of Percy's energy not to jump across the table and punch him. Not like they hadn't been competitive but they'd also been bros. It was all friendly kids-of-the-big-three sort of stuff like who could do the cooler trick with their abilities, and who would win in a fight: Superman or Aquaman. That sort of thing.

"She probably should." Percy finally agreed.

But he didn't get up to move.

 _What's the point? Jason's just going to go chasing after her in a minute._

"I mean, it's fine. I didn't see anything that could point us in a specific direction. I think this is going to be less strategizing and more making it up as we go." Piper offered. If she was attempting to diffuse the tension rising in the air between them, without her charmspeak she was wholly less convincing.

"She should still be here. —Percy, aren't you going to get her?"

"No, _Jason_ , I'm not."

It wasn't the question so much as the way his _friend_ looked at him in a way that set off smoldering deep down inside of his stomach. It wasn't like the one in the bathroom, it wasn't like the pity that had come off of the blonde so thick it nearly choked Percy. Jason had no idea what was going on but those electric blue eyes tried to peer through the son of Poseidon like he was trying to figure out exactly _how_ Percy must have fucked up on this particular occasion. How he must be responsible for Annabeth being _whatever_ Jason was assuming Annabeth was at the moment.

Percy could read between the lines.

"Why don't you just come out and say it?"

He shouldn't, he knew that he shouldn't, but Percy's heart felt like it was crawling up the back of his throat and it pounded harder and faster. Percy Jackson didn't see red, he might not have really saw much of anything because it was like his sight was dulled in light of something else. He could feel the way Jason's blood rushed through his veins and he shouldn't have but he pictured _pushing_ just a little bit. Just enough to make Jason uncomfortable. Maybe just enough to make his stupid fucking face red. He wouldn't even notice. Wouldn't even know that it was Percy instead of indigestion or his own being-a-huge-douche-about-someone-else's-girlfriend.

Two blonde eyebrows crept closer together as the teen stared back at him.

"I don't know—"

"Oh cut the shit, Jason. You're thinking so loud I can practically _hear_ it from over here. So why don't you just say it?"

For a second the other looked away but it wasn't that easy either because he was a son of Jupiter and Jason didn't like to be called on his bullshit, because of the lack of decorum blah blah blah, because Percy had called him out in front of his friends on what were probably not the most noble of intentions or something that was a combination of all three. Which one didn't matter.

"Jason," Leo's voice was soft but from the way he was staring at his friend, Percy was sure there was some unspoken meaning there. Jason's eyes narrowed as he looked back up and he shrugged off Piper's touch when she briefly rest a hand on his arm but Jason shrugged it away. The pressure in the air changed.

"We know you've been through some stuff—"

"— _Jason_ ," Hazel whispered through gritted teeth.

"— But you can't keep taking it out on her. At least she's _trying_."

"Jason, Annie's a big girl in case you hadn't noticed. She doesn't need you fighting her battles for her."

"At least I'm looking out for her."

Percy wasn't sure if the hair standing up on the back of his neck was because adrenaline had long since begun flooding his system, his fingers were digging into the table in front of him (in his defense, instead of Jason's throat, which was pretty great for impulse control in his opinion), or because Jason was getting ready to jump across the table and hit him. _If he hits first, no one can say anything._

Percy didn't quite clock that Frank either had recently taken on a strange resemblance to a fainting goat or he was involuntarily not-quite-but-almost shifting towards barnyard animal. Or that Leo was very definitely attempting to hold Jason's arm once more only to be shrugged off again but this time with a dark look from his friend. Piper looked like a cartoon character glancing between the two of them, the feather in her hair bobbing. Hazel rested a hand on his shoulder and Percy might not have shrugged her off but he hardly felt it. It didn't quite touch the part of him that was seething.

And he laughed. The manic in-the-midst-of-battle-covered-in-his-own-blood sort because, he realized, Jason was squaring his shoulders off like he was ready to take him and how fucking ridiculous was that? How fucking ridiculous was the whole thing? Percy stood up and pushed away from the table with Small Bob following after him, chirruping a low warbling question that Percy didn't answer.

"You know what, dude? If you want to swoop in and be her superman, dude, go for it. I'm not going to pretend we're not all playing 'will they won't they' behind my back."

Jason's ears burned red and the furious flush crept along the rest of his face making the white-blonde of his hair stand out even brighter. _Like the sun,_ he thought but the voice was pitying like one of the daughters of Night. It was too bright. "She would _never_ do something like that. She was a mess while you were gone trying to do everything she could to make sure that we got to you."

"Sounds like you've got her about as high up on a pedestal as she has me. Good luck with that, dude. Don't let the fact that _I_ am her boyfriend stop you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Percy—" Hazel whispered at the same time Leo was attempting to pull a then-standing-Jason back down to the bench in front of the table. Given their difference in height, weight, and general muscle mass the son of Hephaestus wasn't particularly successful.

"It means don't let the fact that I'm her _boyfriend_ stop you. If you want my sloppy seconds, go right the fuck ahead, dude. I'm over all of this shit."

If Percy hadn't been positive why the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end before, he could _feel_ the air itself crackle from far too much static electricity. The pressure changed so quickly his ears popped and _finally_ his muscles aching to just _do something_ felt justified in moving into action. His hand shot out and the glasses of juice and coffee and hot chocolate popped like multi-colored bags of flour being dropped against the ground and exploding upwards as Percy pulled the water from them so quickly the naked eye wouldn't have registered it.

Percy made a shield of ice in front of him just fast enough to avoid a bolt of lightening from the son of Jupiter. Small Bob, always at the son of the sea's heels, pounced and mid air transformed into less of a kitten and more of a saber toothed tiger. The spartus caught Jason by surprise and clamped down hard on his arm and tugged downwards as gravity finally took hold and tugged them downwards. The ice melted quickly, transformed back to water, but even as Jason fell to the ground with the weight of Small Bob he didn't miss an opportunity. The air crackled and Percy dodged just a fraction too slow and the bolt singed his bad arm filling his nose with the scent of burnt flesh and hair. The nerves weren't entirely useless, though, and they flared a pain so brief it was like a tickle and Percy laughed because _yeah fucking right, Sparky, you're going to need to bring a whole lot more shit to take me down_. Tartarus was a whole different level of pain. Percy condensed the water back into a block of ice and sent it flying towards Jason's gut. There was a sick sort of humor in seeing the guy who was chasing after his girl in front of his face winded (and not because they were being called to the son of Jupiter) while Small Bob gnawed at his arm, letting out a warning growl.

"Stop it, both of you!" Piper shouted, her voice honey sweet, but it wasn't enough. Their hearts were beating too fast. Small Bob, on the other hand, let go of the blonde demigod and turned towards the daughter of Aphrodite. It was like a cartoon, the way the ferocious cat, blonde tipped fangs, tilted its head and let out a questioning _mow_ as if the spartus wasn't quite sure _why_ it should stop but it didn't want to disobey either.

"Percy," but Hazel's voice made him hesitate for just a second. Just a second long enough that Jason managed to knock Small Bob to the side before the skeletal cat could regain its senses and with a burst of wind— _man, he really does look like a blonde superman_ — he caught Percy with a right hook to his jaw. Percy was strong but he was unprepared and definitely fifteen to twenty pounds lighter than before he'd fallen into Tartarus so he probably looked like some comic book character as he went flying backwards, his head bouncing with such force that when it smacked the ground, his vision sparked. The taste of copper filled his mouth as his teeth clamped hard, shredding the inside of his cheek, and the air fled his lungs.

"Jason!" Before the blonde could have another go at him, Frank pulled him up from what must have been the scruff of his neck and yanked him back. From the way the blonde held his fist (although there were potentially three blurry and sort of dancing fists at that point), he would have gone in for another hit. Frank, however, hardly looked like he was trying to keep the other teen back and there was a heat to his eyes and set to his jaw that the friendly Canadian normally lacked.

 _Wow— there_ is _a family resemblance. Like an Asian version of Ares but yeah… I think I see it._

Hazel and Piper slipped their arms underneath his shoulders and the two girls pulled him up and hauled his manically-laughing-definitely-not-crying self above deck. They dropped him, the second they got top side and Percy slunk down to the deck. He swallowed a mouthful of blood before lifting his fingers to his jaw and then his lip. The first was tender, his lip was split and a quick brush of his tongue against the inside of his mouth told him that all his teeth seemed to be in tact. Nothing lasting. Still, he was a little too woozy to get to his feet.

"What in the name of my-father was all of that!?" Hazel had a hand on either hip and the gold of her hair and her eyes glinted in the morning light.

The spike of adrenaline was like being pushed off of a cliff as it began to ebb away. Percy's muscles felt weaker and more tired than before, the brief moment of _feeling something_ edging back towards numbness and he could see a mix between disappointment and sorrow across both the girls' faces. Percy didn't bother trying to stand up, instead he slumped kneeling where they'd dropped him. The whole laughing-crying thing was mostly him just quietly crying. Percy didn't _feel_ anything so he wasn't sure why he couldn't make it stop.

"I'm just so fucking tired of all this _bullshit_. He—"

"Don't even give us the he started it. I'm not saying Jason hasn't been being sort of shady with his intentions with Annabeth, godsknows I've been thinking it— what!? I have!—" Piper argued when Hazel smacked her hand. "But that was about _a lot_ more than Annabeth."

"And!?"

"You were baiting him."

 _She's not exactly wrong._

Small Bob came limping up from below. Apparently in the tussle, Jason must have smacked the spartus against the wall once he'd been mystified by Piper's charmspeak. SB seemed to be pulling himself back together alright but the kitten mewled pathetically as it approached Percy. He scooped up the small demon and popped a few bones back into place. It gave a big shake and a stretch before padding at the son of the sea's shoulder like a real kitten and settled down apparently feeling a little better. Part of him did feel a little guilty for saying what he had, but a greater part of him didn't particularly care if he felt guilty or not. It was hardly the worst thing that he'd ever done.

"I shouldn't have said that." He finally murmured without looking up. He didn't want to see the way they were looking at him. Fuck, he never even wanted to look at himself if he could help it.

"What were you thinking?" Hazel's voice set the hairs on the back of his neck on end. She was all that he had left of Nico and he had disappointed her. Worse, yet, he couldn't have accidentally hurt her. _And the others_ , he reminded himself.

"I wasn't, okay? I just… I can't stand the way she looks at me. And I can't stand the way he acts like I'm going to _hurt_ her. Like he's just waiting for me to fuck up and do something fucked up so he can swoop in and just—" Percy groaned and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm tired of trying to pretend I even care. Like— the two can just get the fuck on with it for all I care. Honestly. I'm sick of everything."

The two girls faces were so different, one dark with cat-like eyes and the other more russet with eyes like light reflecting through water, but they wore the same look. They both looked apologetic to something that wasn't their fault. Piper didn't look nearly as surprised as Hazel did.

"Percy—" the daughter of Pluto started.

"I've been having dreams." He finally admitted and dropped his eyes once more. "About Nico." He continued, the name thick on his tongue.

Piper glanced at Hazel and after a moment and some wordless discussion through looks alone, the daughter of Aphrodite excused herself giving them some privacy. Percy watched her leave before finally bringing his gaze back to meet Hazel. For a second she hesitated, her mouth opening and then closing, but eventually she slipped down onto the deck and sat next to him, her legs crossed as she glanced up at him.

 _She's so different to him._ And maybe part of him wished that she looked a little like Nico. And maybe a bigger part of him was glad that she didn't (so he wouldn't have that reminder). Hazel didn't say anything and so the silent hung between the two of them for a few moments as Percy picked at a hole in his jeans and glanced out across the sky unseeing. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say. Or how. Dreams were like trying to hold sand cupped in your hand with the wind biting at you on a blustery day— they slipped away. When he'd woken up he'd been confused and the whole ghost sailor thing hadn't exactly helped anything but Piper began talking about her quest and it came back to him.

"What type of dreams?" The sound of her voice was so soft that whisper didn't quite cover it.

Saying it out loud might make it sound cheap or it might make it real and the son of Poseidon isn't really sure which is the worse of the two. He lifted his knees to his chin and took a deep breath. "Sometimes it's nightmares but mostly it's somewhere peaceful. I see him and we— he tells me things. We talk and he tells me things and maybe it's things I already know or things I never picked up on but like knew deep down or something, you know? But it's… it makes me feel better." Once he starts talking, the words come more quickly. "But then I wake up and it's… Tartarus has probably permanently fucked up my head, Hazel, but none of this feels as real as when I'm talking to him."

She sat next to him silently and he feels crazy, but he also feels sort of relieved to have said it out loud. _At least if you're completely insane, someone else knows now. And it's not for the reasons that Annabeth or Jason suspect. It's just because you like to spend time in a fantasy would with your dead friend more than you like to spend time with any of your living friends. You know. The bog-standard sort of trauma-broken psycho._

"I know that I haven't talked about… I haven't told you what happened. It's not that I don't want to give you answers— and you totally deserve them— but it's like when? And how?"

"You could just start at the beginning." She finally said. "Or leave things out. Maybe once you start talking about it, it'll be easier?" Hazel's voice was soft next to him but he couldn't bring himself to meet her gaze.

Percy opened his mouth and then shut it again because he wasn't sure how he could. It wasn't like he had the luxury of trying to deal with all of the shit that happened down there or how he felt about it. If he started to take a peek into everything he'd shoved down so far he wasn't sure that he'd be able to pull himself away. "You deserve to know what happened and I will tell you but Hazel, but shocker, I know, I'm barely holding myself together." He mumbled with a laugh so hollow and creaky it sounded more like it belonged to her brother than the sea prince. Before she can say anything to scold him or comfort him, Percy reached into his pocket and pulled out the matchstick size version of the remnant of Diocletian's scepter. It was missing the dark stone that had been affixed to the top and with a flick it grew to its true length. It looked like little more than a walking stick with a golden eagle atop it than the scepter it had more clearly appeared when it was complete.

"He wanted you to have this. He said you would need it. He wasn't sure when or how, but he got whatever he needed from it."

The younger teen's eyes grew wide as she reached out and took it from him, twisting it in her hand as stared at it. "This was supposed to help him come back." She whispered and her words caught towards the end and Percy hung his head. With another flick it shrunk in size once more and she secreted it away in her pocket.

" _I_ was supposed to bring him back." What he's eaten for breakfast soured in his stomach and for a moment he thought maybe he might just throw up there on the deck next to where he sat. Percy managed to swallow it back down, "I'm sorry." For a moment sat next to him frozen, her large gold eyes holding onto one of the last things that her brother had held and part of Percy felt guilty because she didn't have anything of his to remember her by. Not really. Percy had the stygian blade. Percy had the skull ring snuggly fitting on his finger. _You should give it to her_ part of him whispered but there was a much larger part that insisted Nico meant for him to have it after that goodb— _don't think about it_ , he reminded himself. _Don't look back. Not yet._

Hazel flicked her wrist and the sceptre returned to a minuscule size and she slipped it into the pouch fixed to her belt, each rapid blink an attempt to keep tears from falling. When she lifted her hand to wipe at her cheeks Percy looked away, not wanting to know if they came back wet but from the sniffled inhale he and brief _woosh_ out as she exhaled, the older teen had a pretty good feeling she was trying to keep it under control but wasn't entirely succeeding.

"I know… you would have done the best you could."

 _You didn't_ , a dark voice deep inside him burned. _You left him, you should have stopped him. You could have if you tried. You could have died and saved him. You could have done so many things better… and maybe he never would have fallen after you._

But he didn't say that maybe because he didn't want Hazel to look at him like what he was: the reason that Nico di Angelo was dead. And maybe he chewed at the already torn inside of his cheek and swallowed the taste of copper because he knew that if he did, she might not agree to help him.

"There's more… there's somewhere we need to go. There's something we need to do."


	16. Drowning Is Easier Than Breathing

Where the Shadows Meet the Sea

Chapter 16

Drowning isn't so scary when its easier than breathing

Percy

* * *

He had come.

Annabeth and Piper had set off to free some god's heartbeat or something equally ridiculous (but unsurprising given their parentage) but Percy had hardly paid a whole lot of attention to the details. He was distractible on a good day and honestly there hadn't been any of those in longer than he cared to think about. Part of him probably should have felt guilty that he didn't make eye contact or say goodbye to Annabeth but he also wasn't willing to look at Jason either. The bruise that should have formed along his jaw never quite blossomed and he wondered idly if that might have been because of all the nectar he'd mixed in with his pomegranate seeds that morning. Who really knew how any of that stuff worked? But Percy was aware that he should have felt guilty for fighting with Jason and the frankly fucked up things he had said (no matter how much he'd meant them). He should have felt guilty.

But he didn't.

He didn't feel much of anything except, if he were being truthful, frustrated and annoyed with both blondes. Percy _should_ feel guilty about everything that happened with the daughter of Athena and son of Jupiter but he didn't and what did that mean? That they were just another freaking tick in the Percy's-totally-fucked-since-he's-been-back box and honestly he resented both of them for being just another example of how he was broken. As if weird manifestations of his powers, night terrors, going nuts during the whole Victory/Nike side quest, conjuring waterlogged zombies and talking to dead sailors weren't flashing neon signs of abnormal even in demigod terms. Seeing them made him think about it, and thinking about it was mentally exhausting. So instead he was annoyed and like most things that were annoying like homework or chores, he avoided them.

Percy made a point of saying goodbye to Piper, though, since she'd cut him some slack with Hazel which had inadvertently led to scheming. Going to visit Styx wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to tell anyone else because he wasn't even sure what they were going to find or what answers she was going to give them. It might be, like most things with the gods, a waste of time. Plus he didn't imagine that Jason would think the other remaining child of the Big Three should be sent unattended with Hazel. Frank probably wouldn't like his suggestion about _how_ they get there. Leo, honestly, would probably be the least effected but the dude was sort of sounding more and more like the most rational out of all of them which either meant Percy had hit his head one too many times or the dude was growing into the dad of the group; Percy wasn't sure which was worse.

"I can't shadow travel like Nico. We can't just _get_ there, Percy."

"We don't need to shadow travel." But the daughter of Pluto hadn't looked convinced. "The labyrinth… we don't need a specific section of the river, just to get there. Your magic will be more than enough." The idea had come to him as he was speaking, like most of the things that popped out of his mouth it happened before he had time to really work through it. It wasn't like he'd exactly had time that morning when he'd woken up. While he was climbing down the ropes from the crow's nest, part of him had thought that he'd have to do something crazy like pray to Hades and hope that his uncle didn't rip his soul from his body immediately on sight. Then another part of him sort of wondered if the god of the Underworld even knew that his child had died because Tartarus wasn't exactly a part of the Underworld but it also wasn't exactly not… it was _below_ so like a stop along the way. Percy's thoughts had been interrupted by Annabeth and Jason and then the whole _thing_ had happened.

Hazel sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and chewed it for a second before she had nodded. "I can do it. I'll need to focus—"

"If any creepy crawlies pop out, leave that to Small Bob and I." The cat had let out a chirp as if in agreement and Percy had answered with a pat to the skeletal kitten's head. "We'll protect you. Trust me, _nothing_ is going to hurt you." Percy hadn't been able to say it but from the look she'd given him with her golden eyes, he was sure she understood. Nico might not be around to protect her like a big brother any more but Percy would.

"Before we do this, I just want to know one thing. What answers are you hoping to find?"

Percy had sputtered for a moment, the air frozen in his lungs. What answers could Styx possibly give him? "Why." It was only three letters but the daughter of Pluto had nodded, the gold of her curls catching the light.

"Okay."

They had waited until after Leo took watch, Jason and Frank disappeared beneath to catch up on sleep or work on who knew what and Piper and Annabeth had left. They'd disappeared from their friend's watch to the other side of the ship and probably the two together made any number of the other occupants presume that Percy was finally providing Hazel with answers. Some covert unspoken mission as they slipped off the ship and out of sight was the last thing the others would presume. Percy hadn't had to explain why they needed to do it in secret to Hazel, probably because she knew how reluctant Jason would be given the morning and how protective Frank would be about finding her way back to her father's domain given she was _technically_ an escaped soul that _theoretically_ should be reaped to balance the scales of death and all that… and Leo would probably want to chaperone because the labyrinth was like a living and breathing magic version of one of his creations.

It had taken a few hours and Hazel's fingertips had practically sparked with the magic coursing through her as an entrance formed and the path was forged. Unfortunately it wasn't free from booby traps or monsters. How hey managed to pop up as quickly as a new pathway was formed Percy had no idea, but then he didn't really understand how a lot of things worked and he'd learned it was better to just accept something as it was than be paralyzed by the _how_. Protecting Hazel hadn't really left time for thought because she her hair stood on end, glimmering gold in the pale light cast around her by her magic, eyes like precious metal, she was a magnet for the things that went bump in the dark. Small Bob and Percy had their work cut out for them— every other turn had rabid dog sized rats or flying venom spitting moth slash eagle creatures or other experimental combinations of things that he didn't have names for but might have found themselves on a ten year old Nico's mythomaniac cards. When they'd finally half fallen out of the labyrinth onto the shores of the river, Percy's shirt was torn and he was bleeding from a number of cuts and grazes but he was laughing because they'd made it and each gash was a time that Hazel hadn't been interrupted. There had been a few close calls but as her curls settled back around her shoulders and she turned her attention to him, Percy wasn't there. He'd taken off at full speed towards the banks of the river.

He'd made it.

He'd come just like Styx had told him to but standing on the riverbed the goddess was nowhere to be seen. Not that he'd expected it to be as easy as just showing up because when had _that_ ever happened? But part of him had sort of hoped that maybe, just this once, something or _someone_ would cut him a break. Weren't the vivid flashbacks and crippling depression enough? He was still pulling his weight as far as the prophecy was concerned so maybe it was a little naive but Percy hadn't been the one seeking out Styx, she'd been the one to drop herself into his dreams and beckon him. Common courtesy was apparently beyond even the most decent of gods and goddesses.

"She said to come… she _told_ me to come, Hazel. Where is she?!"

The longer he paced the more agitated he felt and Small Bob chased on his heels making tiny noises at him."Are you sure— are you sure it wasn't just a dream, Percy?"

Percy could feel Hazel's golden gaze on his back as he paced along the shore.

It had made sense in the moment.

 _It wasn't just a dream— was it? No… no, you_ know _this. You know this one thing. It wasn't._

Styx was a river goddess and if she wasn't going to show up on the banks then there was only one thing to do: jump in and quite literally make a splash to get her attention. Of course, the river wasn't just _a river_ in the Underworld and Percy had sort of forgotten and overlooked that part because impulse and desperation were not great bedfellows. As he'd swan dived into the river it hit him, just before he hit the water, that this river was of course a river of grief and sorrow. A river that separated the living from the dead. A river that bestowed upon those foolish enough to swim in its waters the curse of Achilles… if they didn't burn up or go absolutely mad and die in the process.

 _Probably should have called my mom and tried for her blessing again._

The second he disappeared beneath the water he felt it. It wasn't like Cocytus. It didn't fill his head with a hundred self doubts telling him to stop struggling and let go. It didn't peek inside his head and his heart and unpick the very fears and anxieties that were interwoven with his core. It didn't steal the breath from his lungs and plunge a hundred thousand icy spears into his heart and slowly suck his will dry until there was nothing left and even if it had? Percy has survived it last time. No, as he sunk to impossible depths, he felt fire. Flames licked at his skin and crawled along his arms towards his heart, blossomed against his spine and licked their way out in every direction.

Burning.

For a son of the sea Percy knew a lot about burning. The pain was overwhelming but it was familiar. _You deserve it_ echoed somewhere in the back of his mind. This was what he deserved. For abandoning Nico, not just in Tartarus but in life. For forgetting. For being too little. For living when others hadn't. For forgetting his promises. Each and every good intention, every promise left unfulfilled wrapped around his legs and arms like manacles and attached to them were weights made of guilt and self loathing. They dragged him towards the riverbed and he was frozen like a dragonfly in amber until the reeds and the vegetation reached up and tickled at his bare arms and stomach (his shirt had abandoned his abdomen and was floating around his chest) until they too joined his guilt and loathing, additional manacles pulling him towards. Eventually he landed, bouncing against the river bed, anchored and unable to breath. He floated, eyes stinging, as the flames licked their icy lips. This was a different sort of magic, one that evaded the son of the sea. He had no domain over Styx nor did he have any will to fight her.

 _You deserve this_ , the voice whispered more urgently. _You deserve_ worse _than this_.

Green eyes blinked, his head turned, each movement sluggish. Above him, what dim light there was diffused and scattered down below, shadows of the watery weeds dancing, but Percy only noticed it when the light bent and danced, the surface of the water disturbed. As he glanced up he could see a figure diving down, struggling against the current of the water. Hazel was bathed in a halo of golden locks and reflective gold eyes, diving down towards him. She swam with the discomfort of someone whose element was earth; she _could_ swim but each stroke was an effort and he could see the way she struggled. Her head turned to and fro, eyes squinted but opened, as she attempted to locate her friend. When she spotted him, she swam towards him.

 _Go back,_ the voice inside whispered. _Go back and don't worry about me._ She couldn't hear him, that much he know, and yet her movements faltered. She was so close, her fingertips parting the reeds and he was positive that she could see him, her bright eyes meeting his own. A shadow passed across her face, an expression he couldn't read and as her hand reached out for him, it sputtered and hesitated. The previous metal of her eyes turned hard as Hazel looked at him, her expression contorting, and she jerked backwards.

 _She knows you deserve this._ The voice that was his (but also not his) whispered in the back of his head. But Hazel wasn't burning, her expression had hardened but the flames hadn't wrapped her in their embrace. Her flesh wasn't being frozen, ice seeping into her veins, eyes threatening to turn to marble inside their sockets. For a moment her fingers twitched and Percy thought that, perhaps, she was the angel she appeared hovering above him and that she might reach out and wrap her fingers around his own as his own hand stretched for hers. For a moment they might have resembled some long forgotten painting, Percy's arm outstretched and fingers splayed wishing for a salvation he knew he didn't deserve while she with her golden halo and beautiful cinnamon skin held the fallen hero in her sights. Greek reaching for Roman. Hazel kicked off with her feet, the blade at her side reflecting the light into his eyes caused Percy to blink. When he opened them once more he could see only her feet, the rest of her breaching the surface. Hazel would not die in Styx because it might eat away at undeserving Greeks but it was not the same symbol to the Romans.

Percy's heart sputtered in his chest.

 _Wake up._

The ice spread further with each erratic pump.

 _Wake up, Percy._

The words tickled at the back of his consciousness, soft and dark like a mess of _his_ curls falling across warm eyes. _Like whose eyes?_ Percy wondered but the thought was already gone, replaced by the freezing flames that were consuming him. His lungs ached, wishing for air, but there was nothing to give them down here. Nothing that even a child of Poseidon could glean from the water. The muscles in his body began to twitch as if fighting against their fate, trying to move before they were frozen like a granite statue. Every nerve screamed in pain and they echoed through his head, bouncing around, a chaotic cacophony. They drowned out the voice soft and pleasant, and it was forgotten, lost on the current that tugged at his hair and his clothing. But the frostbite… there was something peaceful about so much pain eating him alive. In the pit burning meant sustenance, it meant living, it meant losing parts of yourself you couldn't live without, it meant learning that you _must_ live without those pieces because you found parts of yourself that should never be allowed to live. Burning in the pit was being consumed by flames, broiling from the inside, melting away the parts of yourself that were good and decent. Burning here was a frozen tundra, frostbite that crept in through the cracks and filled you, turning you to stone and Percy thought, perhaps, it was more final. Somewhere deep inside himself where cowardice and exhaustion grew, the demigod felt relief.

 _Wake up, Percy. You_ need _to wake up. You don't have much time._

There it was again, sweet and cool, a balm against the icy burn.

 _Let me go,_ Percy begged. _Just let me go. You can't ask any more of me… there's nothing left of me to give._

The river was replaced with darkness and somehow Percy knew that it lived inside of him, and he was suspended in the middle of it. The glacial flames licked at his skin, eager to devour, to turn him to crystal, were just as dark as his insides. They were not red and yellow with white-hot centers. They were black and bruised purple, their blue centers burning frostbite that ate away at him, freezing him, ice cascading outwards from his core, encasing his heart. Eventually his limbs would turn brittle and his flesh would flake away, crystals of ice shattering with the softest of touches. There would be nothing left but shards of glass, jagged and uneven. Nothing left of Percy Jackson, nothing left of the _thing_ that had come back from Tartarus in his place. Nothing of the boy who had lost his best friend. Nothing of the boy who had fought and screamed and clawed against the shadows to get back to him, helpless and useless. Nothing left of the boy who always forgot, always had good intentions but whose fatal flaw— his _true_ fatal flaw— was lacking the capacity to ever follow through. Who broke all his promises, though he'd always intended to keep them.

 _Wake up._

Percy feels it then, like a thread being forced through the eye of a needle with hands far more meticulous and patient than his own. A life line. A warmth against the glacier encompassing him. A balm against the frostbite. The tickle turns into the ghost of a caress as fingers trace along his jaw, long and nimble, their tips calloused. They whisper their way across his skin and disappear into his hair. Something flutters deep inside where his stomach should live and Percy's heart falters in his chest. He feels it, the way the fingers tangle themselves, padding against his scalp and the way a thumb traces against the hollow of his cheek. When Percy opens his eyes, he can see it, the faint glow cutting through the depth of the river Styx. It's thin, the thinnest of any thread he has ever seen, faint and flickering and fighting the shadows back, the soft green like Greek fire. Like the lanterns that lined Hades' palace, and just like those lanterns, it sends the shadows dancing (like it did at their feet when they'd walked the halls together).

The thread pulses, flickers and then shines brighter, attempting to forge itself where previously there had been nothing. It's hypnotizing. Percy's eyes are nothing but that glowing green.

Things had been so different then — they were younger. Had seen less. Had lost _so much_ less. Percy had followed the child of Hades into his father's trap and stared at him wide eyed from the other side of stygian steel bars. The son of Poseidon had had a bad feeling about coming to the Underworld, even to bathe in the River Styx before the last battle, but he had let Nico talk him into it. Not because he wanted the protection or because he thought he deserved it (if it worked) but because he wanted to believe the younger boy. Percy wanted to believe that Nico had forgive him for all the thoughtless, foolish, careless thing he had done. Failing to protect his sister. Forgetting to take care of him. Hurting him. Abandoning him. Percy wanted so badly to be redeemed in the other's boys eyes, for them to be friends (for them to be family because he had no others), that he'd ignored the instinct that kept a demigod alive. And Nico had looked at him horrified, the shadows curling around him anxiously, trembling in the green light of the fire when he realized what his father had done, how deep his betrayal cut.

What it would cost.

Percy's heart was crushed.

 _It's time to wake up, Percy._

Green eyes blink and he traces the luminous green tether from where its dancing towards the surface down, closer and closer and closer until he can just about make out the boy in front of him. Percy can see him if he tries, just his essence, mostly just his outline. Percy leans into the feeling of Nico's hand against his cheek and the glacier that's threatening to consume him begins to melt with the warmth spreading from that spot just behind his ear outwards. Nico's touch strengthens as Percy leans into it, accepting it. Nico isn't really here, of course, Percy knows that, but some part of his subconscious is feeding him with what it needs to find the will to accept the curse of Achilles and anchor himself to the world before the river could burn him up.

 _Come on, Jackson. Don't give out on me now._

Percy can feel it. That weak spot forming, right there, right behind his ear, right where Nico's fingers had buried themselves in their last moments. It's not the same as last time, not anything like before the Battle of New York. Not like when Nico had betrayed him and then saved him. The anchor had been Annabeth, the rope silver and strong and rooted so deeply within the small of his back. Now it's as thin as a thread, green like Greek fire, and burns just as bright, pulsing as it grows stronger. Percy leans into the touch, turns his head and his lips brush against a palm, and his heart quiets in a way it hasn't in he can't remember how long. He has to live, not for the quest, not for his friends, not even for Annabeth. He has to live for Nico no matter how imfuckingpossible it feels because the son of Hades had asked him never to forget him and then… then he'd died for him.

You couldn't remember if you weren't around.

 _You promised._

Percy can feel the thread growing stronger and when he opens his eyes, it's the fire of Greek flames dancing with foam the color of the sea and they are seamless, intertwining, tangling together, growing stronger. The competing colors weave themselves thicker, chasing after one another, until they're a rope and the light from them is so bright it makes the shadows dance along the riverbed. The more skittish of the fish hide among the watery ice is chased from his veins by the warmth of the touch there and when he brings his gaze back he can see him. Nico. Kneeling before him at the bottom of the riverbed, his dark curls an even darker halo as they float around his head.

Percy reaches out with his hand and he mirrors the motion, cupping Nico's face, and he can _feel_ him. Feel the hollow of his cheek with his thumb, the faint rough patches where stubble might grow if given the chance because he's the older Nico, the one after Geras, the one who had used his element against Percy to trap him in the elevator. To save him. There's the scar down the side of his face interrupting his eyebrow and sputtering back to life along his cheek from dueling with Lycoan. Percy's other hand raises so he can hold Nico's hand to his face. To keep him there. Keep him from moving away.

 _This isn't real._

Who cares? It feels real. It feels peaceful. It's the closest to steady he's felt since he's been back.

"You kissed me."

And just like Percy Jackson he stuffs his foot right in his mouth, sneaker and all, because the first thing he should do to a hallucination is argue with it. He doesn't want to chase Nico away; he wants him to _stay_ but the teenager in front of him laughs and shrugs his shoulders. It's infuriating the way he doesn't say anything, the way he doesn't respond, and he wonders if the hallucination isn't strong enough to at least give him the boy's voice. Percy didn't realize how badly he wants it until it doesn't come.

"You kissed me… and then you… a-aren't you going to say anything?" Percy trails off floundering like a fish out of water. He is aware then, the burning in his lungs, that he needs to breathe. That this water doesn't do anything to provide him oxygen. Nico's touch might help him begin to form the anchor to the world so the curse of Achilles can take hold, but it doesn't fill his lungs.

As if reading his mind, Nico leans forward and captures Percy's lips with his own. Nico tasted like cinnamon and shadows, cloves and molasses cookies he'd eat straight from the oven (burning himself whilst his mother yelled at him to wait until they'd cooled down laughing all the while and maybe this sensation is burning up in a different way), dark and rich like espresso and just the tiniest bit bitter. Just like the first time, he could feel it, the way Nico's walls crumbled down and emotions bled out. No wonder he kept people away, because the Ghost King was as turbulent and consuming as the tide— no, not the tide but an _avalanche_ _—_ but they weren't really so different, were they? And where Percy's lungs had burned with need before they found themselves filled, no longer choking for air. His fingertips pressed more firmly, pads of his fingers digging into Nico's locks and he wasn't sure if it was too rough or just the right way to anchor them together but Percy didn't want the other to stop. Not when his heart finally felt like it was beating, not when the ice it had been encased in long before the Styx was finally starting to melt away. Every second was a silent _don't go don't go don't go_ to the cadence of his heart beating in his ears.

Nico pulled away, their foreheads pressed together.

"I kissed you… that was a sentence not a question."

Percy wanted to roll his eyes so loudly but instead he laughed, the jittery stuttery kind. He hadn't asked a question and it was just Nico to call him out on it.

"You kissed me, question mark?"

"You were there."

Percy might have fallen over if he weren't already kneeling on the riverbed so he stayed upright because half floating there was really no way for him to fall. Percy could feel the warmth in his cheeks, taste the other on his lips, and it was just like before with his heart doing acrobatics in his chest.

"Why?" Three letters he practically choked on ever since that moment in Tartarus. Everything around them was dark, just the two of them, no carnage, no chaos, and Percy had _time_ to form those three letters. It was the one thing he hadn't let himself wonder or think about. Those last few moments… because if he started he wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop picturing what had happened, the way Nico looked, how the other had trapped him in the elevator, the things that he'd screamed as he practically frothed at the mouth (he hadn't meant any of them and he wished he could have said anything kinder), the blood and those final moments with the world tearing apart. His heart breaking. But with Nico kneeling across from him he finally found the courage to ask.

"Are you angry?"

"Yes." Percy didn't realize that part of him was until he'd said it. Until the words were out there. He felt it rush through him, the tide snatching greedily at a landslide of earth free falling from the mountains, crashing into the sea. "You— you _left_ me. You threw me in the elevator. You can't just… you can't just do that and then…" but he was flustered and the words left him again. It was a quick burning anger and it left him hollow as it sputtered out. He couldn't be mad at Nico so he sighed, shoulders drooping, and he felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. "Why would you do that?"

"Do you honestly have to ask?"

"I need to know."

But the avalanche of emotions have stopped and Percy can feel the wall that Nico builds back up with a sad smile and haunting eyes, just a slight bow of his head. "The world takes everything. I couldn't let it take you." Percy knows that he won't get any more of an answer and his heart falters in his chest.

"I won't forget you," Percy promises. He hadn't been able to tell Nico last time. He'd been too hurt, too blindsided, too angry, too betrayed at not being able to stay with him, too disappointed in himself for not saving him.

Nico closes his eyes for a moment and nods before opening them again. Percy knows the moment that Nico catches sight of the skull ring on his finger, where their hands meet by his face. He doesn't know that look, that expression, but it is dark and fierce and it lights something warm deep inside his gut— it might be something a little like possessive. It's gone just as quickly as it comes.

"It's time for you to go." Even as he says it, Percy can feel the rope tugging.

"This is a dream, isn't it? It's not real. This is all inside my head."

There's a slow smile, the kind that's a little sad at the eyes, but also the kind that's sort of out of practice and out of use like a creaky door hinge. It's a little awkward but it suits Nico just fine. "You should know better, Jackson. Since when are demigod dreams just dreams?"

"Don't leave me again."

Nico smiles at him sadly and if he wants to say more, the son of Hades doesn't, leaving it there.

Percy leans forward this time, he catches the moment that the other's dark eyes go wide before their lips meet again— or maybe they don't— but maybe they do for a fraction of a second. The moment passes just as quickly and the boy who saved his life over and over again dissolves away. Percy's hand is no longer holding Nico's to his face and when he opens his eyes the boy is gone.

"Nico? Don't— I _need_ you."

His words are lost in the water. Where his hand had clutched Nico's, his fingers are now holding the rope anchoring him to the world. It's thick and strong, braided with the green of Greek fire dancing fiercely with the foam of the sea, the colors distinct but intertwined. Percy holds tight to the rope and with a heavy heart pulls himself back towards the surface.

Hallucination, vision, visitation, Percy doesn't know. All he knows is that Nico di Angelo keeps on saving him.

Percy kicks his legs and swims back to the surface with the taste of molasses dark and thick as shadows on his tongue.


	17. A River Goddess

_Where the Shadows Meet the Sea_

Chapter 17

 _A River Goddess, A Desperate Son of Poseidon, And Things She Never Knew About Nico_

Hazel

* * *

Hazel's lungs burned for oxygen and she kicked her feet harder, arms scrabbling to take her towards the surface with a determination fueled by the fury boiling in her gut. _Leave him to drown._ A kick of her feet. _He doesn't deserve to be here_! Another kick. _He's the reason your brother is dead!_ Seeing Percy struggle at the bottom of the river, she had reached out her hand to him only to withdraw it when her better judgement caught up with her. Why should she save the one responsible for Nico's death? Why should she help him? Even as she'd snatched her hand away, his green eyes had not looked surprised. _And they shouldn't be… even_ he _knows that he deserves this!_

When she finally broke the surface her lungs gulped for air greedily and she pulled herself to the shore, her clothes clinging to her and weighing her down nearly as much as her hair. _He doesn't even respect you enough to tell you what happened to your brother._ Her spatha was the brightest thing along the shore and she crawled towards it, her hand closing around the hilt as she glanced back towards the water. Hazel wasn't a good enough swimmer to jump back in with it otherwise she might have opened up his throat and watched the water turn red. _He probably killed him! The blood he was covered in, it was probably Nico's and you all just bandaged him up and welcomed him back._ It would have been more satisfying than waiting for the last of the bubbles to break the surface. She'd have to dive back in just to be sure that he was dead. To be sure that the son of Poseidon had truly drown. It wasn't as good as if she'd been able to do it with her own hands, but she'd have to live with that.

 _W-what… what are you thinking?_

Golden eyes looked down at her hand clinging to her spatha with a white knuckled grip and her stomach sunk. She released it and clapped her hands over her mouth as she tried to swallow back a sob. She'd left Percy on the bottom of the river bed to die and… and she had wanted him to suffer, wanted the light to go out from his eyes. Because of Nico. She wasn't sure where that had come from or how the tide of loathing had clung so tightly to her heart but she scrabbled back toward the river. They'd come because of Percy's dream and Hazel might not have understood the sort of answers that they might find but she needed them. The second her hand hit the water she heard the voice urgent at the back of her mind. _Why would you save him? He deserves this. He deserves far worse!_

Hazel withdrew her hand and the thought faded, a foreign voice that masqueraded as her own. Percy had been down too long, even for a son of Poseidon. Whatever his powers, he had not been able to breath. The image of him at the bottom of the river with a look she'd seen across Nico's face when he thought no one was looking had Hazel on her feet as she searched the riverbed. There had to be something, anything, really. Something to help her help him. But for all the banks of the river that separated the dead from the living, she found nothing, not even the goddess herself. Hazel's mind race and her heart beat in her ears as she raced back and forth looking for— what exactly? _A branch, debris, a rope!? Oh my gods, Hazel, what were you thinking coming out here with him. You didn't_ bring _anything with you. You should have brought something with you._ Her magic was too exhausted to conjure a rope… not after creating an entrance to the labyrinth and forging a path to the Underworld… one that wouldn't be far enough from her father's palace that they would _hopefully_ go undetected. She seriously doubted that even her father was willing to overlook the transgression of his son to bring back a daughter, there was only so far he could claim ignorance within his own domain. Her muscles felt weak and her head was light from the effort but what good would conjuring something as small as a rope anyway? It wouldn't get to him. It wouldn't be useful.

This was not how she'd expected the day to go when she'd woken up. Sure, the Argos II had been pelted by freezing rain but the sound had been sort of comforting like rain on a window pane and she had woken just long enough to roll back over. Maybe she was sleeping a little longer than before but it was far less restless. Ever since Percy had come back and her brother hadn't… well, it didn't seem like the greatest worry, not with the world ending. She kept waiting for the conversation, for Percy to explain exactly what had happened before he'd come out of the elevator swinging and covered in gore but the time never came. Frank tried to comfort her, but even he knew that she wouldn't be able to truly mourn the loss of her brother until she knew how she'd lost him. Nico had single handedly whisked her back to the world of the living whilst the door of death had been missing and while she might not have had a chance to get to know him as well as she would have liked, she wouldn't get that chance. She would live and he… well, he wouldn't.

Annabeth chasing around the ship looking for her boyfriend with Jason on her heels hadn't been enough to convince the golden eyed girl to crack her eyes open for any more than a few moments and a mumbled 'haven't seen him.' It wasn't exactly a singular incident. If Percy hadn't been briefly missing or doing something sort-of-in-character-but-amplified-by-about-twenty Hazel probably would have been more worried. Everyone handled grief differently, she probably knew that better than most. There had been enough things to grieve in her first life. It just so happened that the second one promised to match it. Piper calling her to breakfast for a meeting, on the other hand, had inspired her from bed. She'd padded sleepily for their meeting and helped herself to one too many waffles while they discussed options, Annabeth got upset, Percy rolled his eyes, and the two ultimately went off to talk. Whatever they talked about only Percy had come back and the whole fight— the daughter of Pluto hadn't exactly been surprised. The other two children of the Big Three had been slowly simmering to this point. Hazel _was_ surprised that they'd escalated to throwing punches and exchanging blows with their powers.

Percy's confession about Nico had… taken her breath away. Hazel had dreamed of him, too. They sat side by side, usually in silence and she felt comforted by his presence. She was afraid that if she spoke he would disappear or that the voice in her dream wouldn't be quite right. It might shatter the illusion and so they stay side by side on her bed and she found some measure of comfort there. Maybe one day she would gather the courage to try to speak.

When they'd arrived at the river, Hazel had fallen to the ground her knees jelly and her head pounding. She had never kept concentration so long and while Percy had a few cuts in his shirt from monsters that had gotten a little too close and Small Bob's claws and jaw were stained red, she knew that she wouldn't have managed to be even one achey piece if it hadn't been for the two of them protecting her the whole while. She had been in a trance but even her far away golden gaze has been able to register the unending flurry of motion that was the two of them leading her forward and clearing a path, taking any obstacle head on with the occasional roar or hysterical laugh. Percy had instantly dropped to her side and grabbed her elbow.

"You did it, Haze! We're here."

She'd smiled up at him and accepted his hand as he pulled her to his feet. They'd had to walk another thirty or so feet toward the river bed and with each wobbly step, she'd been convinced that Styx would be waiting for them. Like she had waited for Hazel and Piper last time. Percy was of the same mind if his barely constrained stride was anything to go by, but he stayed by her side with the stygian blade in his good hand. The sight of Percy Jackson with a sword made for a child of the Underworld had stopped surprising her Victoria/Nike.

Percy had stalked along the edge of the shore and from the tense set of his muscles his patience was thin. Small Bob followed on his heels meowing in question.

"He said that she'd be waiting," he murmured.

Hazel wanted to ask who but she had a feeling of Percy's dreams and his confession earlier was anything to go by then he meant her brother. Goosebumps had trailed along her skin as Percy paced looking more and more like a rubber band wound tight enough to snap. The stygian blade was lost to the hilt he wore over his back and with his hand free he ran it through his hair. It was naturally messy but lately it looked more like a wavy unkempt mess than charmingly tussled by sea air. As he tugged at his hair, Hazel could practically hear him grinding his teeth while he tried to think.

"Maybe we should try calling out to her."

Hazel's words hadn't sounded that different from they had attempting to comfort Arion the first time they had met. The tone comforted Percy, too… and she didn't like want to think about the fact that technically they were sort of half brothers and everything, even if one of them was a divine horse, but it was also hard _not_ to think about.

"Hello? Styx? We came as you requested."

But there was no answer and Percy soon began his pacing, spartus sticking to him like a shadow. In fact, the small cat (because he was in kitten form now that he didn't need to be chewing off demonic bats ears or whatever) occasionally hopped and batted as if he _was_ playing with the shadow.

"It doesn't make any sense. I _saw_ them." Percy spoke more urgently but she might not have been there.

"Do you think," she had whispered trying to find the right phrasing, "do you think your dream could have been wrong?"

"W-what do you mean?" Percy had turned on her then and she couldn't interpret the turmoil in his eyes but they were darker and more weary than she most she had seen.

"Maybe… maybe you got confused. Maybe it was just a dream."

The laughter that had followed was brief and barking. "That doesn't make any sense. No, no it wasn't wrong. She told me to come. _Nico_ told me to come."

Hazel had held both her hands up, palms out, as if attempting to quiet the skittish equine with which he shared one-half of his parentage. Each step was slow not because she thought that he would lash out at her but Percy was on edge. He was fragile, even if he tried to pretend he wasn't. "How do you know it was really them, Percy? You haven't been… I mean I'm not blaming you or anything, but you haven't been yourself. Maybe you got a little confused."

"No!" Percy practically bared his teeth and Small Bob had hissed, ceasing his skipping within the boy's shadow to stand beside him. "He told me she was waiting. He _wanted_ me to come. I don't know why but I know what I saw, Hazel, and I'm not going to let you make me question myself."

But even by the end, his words lost their sting and the fight faded from his eyes. Percy looked as lost as her mother sometimes had during the worst of it. The thought turned her blood cold and she didn't want to hurt him but the daughter of Pluto had to try to calm him. If it turned out this whole thing was for nothing— and more and more of her was starting to think that— they were going to have to peaceably find a way back. That meant that Percy needed to be calm… or at least as calm as one could be. "It's normal for you to dream about someone you've lost. I dream about Nico sometimes… we sit on the edge of my bed. We don't talk. We just sit. But it makes me feel better." Each step takes her closer until finally she rests a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe it makes you feel better, too."

For a second he stared at his feet and Hazel thought, perhaps, she had gotten through to him. That Percy had quieted, but just as fierce as a riptide, he pulled away. "No! No, that's not what's happened. And if she's not going to come to us then I guess we'll just have to come to her."

Hazel hadn't had a chance to ask him what he meant before he flashed her a grin (something that looked a little more reckless than she would have liked) and a wink. "Fingers crossed we don't burn up. I'm not too sure anyone's ever tried it a second time." Hazel didn't get a chance to ask him what he meant before turning and running towards the river bank. He disappeared with the most perfect dive punctuated by an exaggerated splash. Either it was something to do with his innate water abilities or he was just a big old show off. Small Bob stood pacing on the shore whining the most pathetic sound she'd ever heard. Apparently even skeletal cats hated water, or at least _this_ water. Hazel had muttered under her breath something not-strictly-entirely-unracist (or was it nationalist?) about Greeks.

Small Bob whined at her, the urgency in his mrowl begging the daughter of Pluto to do something but as much as she needed to act she was frozen. What could she even do? There was nothing around them, her magic was tapped out, and touching the water set off some undiscovered rage center in her core. All she could do was pulling at the sopping golden curls in an attempt to wring them out so she didn't go insane with her inability to do _anything_ just then.

And then she screamed and shouted. "Where are you!? Are you just going to let him die? He came because _you_ asked him to!" But turning to and fro she was alone besides the spartus. Small Bob ran to the river bed and dipped his toe in the water before pulling it back with a hiss and a yelp. Goosebumps whispered up the back of her neck and she glanced back and forth. _Nico?_ She wasn't sure where the thought came from but the thought popped into her head just as if he'd appeared before her eyes. Something felt like him although she wasn't sure what. And then she saw it, there, faint as it danced across the top of the water. The green of Greek fire flickering so weak she might have missed it at first.

The curse of Achilles didn't exactly translate to Roman mythology but that didn't mean Hazel was unfamiliar.

"Percy!?" She shouted towards the water running to its edge, though she was careful not to touch it.

The color grew brighter, lighting up the surrounding water and though she couldn't see to the darkest depths, the color fluctuated and churned until two colors threaded together. "Percy!?" She tried again. Eventually she saw movement and the son of Poseidon breached the surface with a gasp so loud it echoed along the riverbanks. Dark hair was plastered to his face, in his eyes, but he kicked to the shore and pulled himself up.

"Thank the gods you're okay!" She threw her arms around him even as her throat tightened. It wasn't until she saw him that she realized how close she had been to losing the other.

 _And it would have been your fault. You left him there. You wouldn't help him._

"I'm so sorry! I didn't… I don't know what came over me. Once I was in the water it was like—" but she sputtered because she wasn't sure how to explain what had come over her. "My blood boiled and I was so… I was so angry with you. About Nico. About everything and I just… I couldn't help you." The words being whispered out loud broke the dam that held back tears she had been too paralyzed to cry just as she'd been to incapable of helping him. Hazel might not be able to hold Nico one last time but she squeezed Percy as hard as she could and buried her face against his chest. "I'm so glad you're okay."

"You don't have to apologize, Haze." Something about his voice was too quiet and the sopping wet teenager wanted to ask but before she could, a soft voice bubbled from her right.

"My waters differ in their significance to Romans." Hazel had not fully pulled away from Percy when her hand was already on the hilt of the imperial gold spatha, ready to remove the long blade from where it rested. Percy, however, hardly flinched as he turned toward the voice. Before them the goddess Percy had risked a second jump in the river over stood before them. Styx's long hair was woven around the top of her head, speckled with colorful reeds and water vegetation with a few tendrils falling freely in a messy and yet natural look, the crown atop her head bright water lillies and cattails. Although her waters were calm and fish spawn in the fold of her robes made of water, she held herself in a manner that commanded respect. Beautiful as she was the set of her eyes was stern and unyielding, she bestowed favor to those who kept their oaths but those who failed… Well Hazel was sure she wouldn't want to cross her.

As she stepped closer, Hazel couldn't help but notice her intricate sandals or the tiny duck that was half hiding behind her legs. Small Bob must have noticed as well because he made a hiss at the duck who quacked back in response. When Styx turned her gaze upon the spartus and gave a firm, "psssst," noise to discourage him the skeletal cat must have recognized her strength and took to hiding behind Percy.

"My lady," Percy murmured with a bow of his head and the daughter of Pluto followed suit. The goddess bowed her head and offered a small smile.

"Percy Jackson, Hazel Levesque." She regarded them with a look that the daughter of Pluto couldn't exactly read but sent a chill trilling up her spine. "I must say I am impressed. So few have attempted to take on the blessing offered by my waters, most of those who have attempted have perished." She gave a watery laugh as she stepped closer, the small duck diving into the water of her robes as it chased after a fish. "So interesting, the water of the Little Tiber undid my blessing, and here you are to receive it once more."

"Honestly it's more like a happy accident." The son of Poseidon confessed. "I was— uh, well, I was trying to get your attention. It didn't seem like you were home so I thought I'd go in after you."

Styx's face rippled with something, maybe surprise, but it was just as quickly replaced with the slight tugging at the corners of her mouth to form a bemused grin. "You are nothing if not truly unique, just like your situation. Come, then." She motioned for the demigods to join her as she took a seat upon the bank of her shore. She smelled of damp earth and clay but it was not unpleasant. Hazel watched Percy, her hand still closer to the hilt of her spatha than was strictly called for but she also knew that anything could happen. The goddess had given her a gift to present to her brother, one that he had returned to her care and… the demigod shook her head. Percy was already sitting before the goddess and Small Bob had jumped into his lap, curling around and around until he finally made himself comfortable.

 _Yeah, just relax. We're meeting with a goddess and we have no idea what's going on._

Hazel's fatigue hit her then. Using her magic, attempting to swim after Percy, being consumed with rage and being drained of it just as quickly? Exhausting. She could have curled up and taken a nap. Maybe it was an underworld kid thing.

Styx watched silently until Hazel sat, her knee bumping Percy's. She had to adjust the hilt for her spatha since the thing was as long as her leg and sitting with it on wasn't exactly the easiest feat but she managed it in the end, her hand holding the hilt of the imperial blade to keep it at an angle. Percy watched as she got seated, mindlessly petting Small Bob, before he turned his gaze back to Styx. Her eyes were watchful.

"That ring, it is not yours."

"It's Nico's," Percy said his name like… Hazel wasn't sure. She'd never heard it sound that way before, though, from anyone.

"How did you come to possess it?"

"He gave it to me before…" but his voice trailed off and from the tilt of the goddess' head and the softening of her gaze, she already knew.

"Tokens are not uncommon in the Underworld. They're things of great power… and significant symbols."

She wanted to ask exactly what Styx meant by that but whatever it was, Percy spoke before she had a chance. "I came because you called me. You said that you had something for me." Golden eyes widened as she turned from the goddess to Percy. He had said he'd had a dream that he was supposed to come but he hadn't said that he'd actually been beckoned. "You said you had something that I was missing." Hazel's heart skipped three beats in her chest.

"Do you know my story?"

Hazel didn't have to look to know the confusion written on his face because it colored her own.

"What— I don't—"

"Do you know how I came to be? Stories of where we come from are important to later understand where we might be."

"I-I don't," Hazel whispered. Maybe it's because it was a goddess sat before them but as much as she wanted answers and she had no idea how in the h-e-double-hockeystick this could possibly be relevant, she wasn't at the point of throwing things around and hoping for answers before being smote.

"I was one of three thousand daughters of Tethys and Oceanus. I was married to the Titan Pallas, a marriage of politics, as you can imagine, and with three thousand daughters one could hardly be choosey with what was available. Happiness was the least of my parents concerns," she spoke and flowing, like water gently sloping around a river bend and though Hazel could find nothing about her brother in the context of the story, she couldn't help but listen. "We had children, of course, as one does in the name of duty and whilst I watched over my river and the world changed, I forged new paths for myself. Things were always in motion then, a new species here, a new breed there, a new terrain. It was a time of conflict but it was also a time of birth. Eventually my waters found themselves winding ever nearer another, one of flames and heat." Styx smiled and Hazel wasn't sure if a goddess smiling was reassuring or chilling.

"Phlegethon was nothing like Pallas. Pallas was not a thing of water, he resided over spring and war. He could not understand the simple pleasure of your home being also your essence itself… Phlegethon, however, a river of _heat_ and _flames_ … well he was so different from myself and yet so much the same. To love him… I knew it to be all consuming and yet one day our waters met and I did not regret it, but it burned away everything of myself. My river remained, but for the indiscretion I was banished to the Underworld where my husband would not have to look upon me. Those which cannot be seen, as you know, are forgotten and those things forgotten fade away. And so I stayed, a shadow, for more years perhaps than I could count, content as I was for having loved as I wished."

"I don't understand," Percy murmured, "what this story means."

But her look told them to be patient. "The Titan War was not as cut-and-dry as Zeus might have you believe. Though he chose to rise against the Titans, garnering support for his campaign was not automatic. Despite my diminished form, fading more and more each day as I wound around the Underworld in eternal darkness, I was the first to swear myself to Zeus. It was not because of my husband, nor my parents. The Titans… there must have been a better way. I was sure of it. And despite my banishment, despite my lack of strength, I was the first to kneel before Zeus and swear loyalty. I could not say if the king of the gods admired my audacity, or the courage to love the very thing that burned me, but at the end of the war he restored me and decreed that all should swear their oaths upon me. He allowed my waters to run amongst the world of the living, just as they did amongst the dead."

"That makes n—"

Before Percy could say anything incendiary, she could see his patience giving way from the set of his jaw, Hazel interrupted. "I think what Percy is trying to say is that… it's a beautiful tale, your grace, I'm just not sure what it has to do with my brother."

With a nod of her head, Styx lifted her hand and the water from her robe flowed as it fell down towards the shore beside her disconnecting from her garment. As she rested her hand in her lap once more, the water softened pebbles that were her eyes danced from Percy to Hazel and back again all the while the water lost from her robes twisted and writhed and moved as it formed into shapes, one larger than the other. "You know what happened at the end, but you do not know why and without the why, little one, you cannot know what happened at all."

Hazel was mesermized by the flowing and moving of the water as it danced and flowed the two shapes forming, not quite like clay being molded because that was too cumbersome but invisible hands seemed to be pinching here and rolling there as the water expanded and expanded until two figures made entirely of her water sat along the shore beside them. The air caught in her throat and Percy was choking on his tongue beside her. Hazel dared to reach out her hand but stopped shy with one look from Styx. She could feel Percy go rigid beside her so she placed her hand on his knee.

"Bob," he whispered just as the small kitten let out a desperate meow.

"Mine was one of his favorite stories, second only to, well, you'll see."

"Tell me again," a voice deep but burbling as if it were speaking under water met her ears. She might not have recognized him but there, sat next to him with one leg out stretched and the other folded under him was a watery rendition of her brother.

"You've heard it a million times, Bob." And it's his voice. Echoy and distorted by the water but it's her brother and Hazel's vision goes blurry. Percy chokes once more beside her.

" _Not_ one million."

Not-Nico rolls his eyes and drops backwards onto the shore and rests one of his hands on his ribs, the other beside him. "Fine, fine, fine. Not one million, but enough. Why don't you start me off? You've heard it enough times to at least know how it begins."

"Bob remembers snow. And ice. You were in school. With your sister."

Hazel's brows furrowed and it took her a moment to realize that whatever this was, it wasn't about her. Nico had an older sister, she knew that. But he mentioned Bianca infrequently and the details about her were far more scarce beyond the occasional slip here or there. Nico had once told her that Bianca would have liked her but the boulder growing in her throat was as much from the way her heart was breaking in watching as it was from the guilt over curiosity to continue listening to something that was clearly a memory of a private conversation.

"Bianca and I had moved to Maine to attend a private school. It was storming but even before then I couldn't sleep. I had a feeling that night that something was happening, something was coming. I've only had those feelings a few times in my life but that night as we sat at dinner was one of them. I told Bianca but she shushed me. She didn't want any of her friends to overhear and it was bad enough that I was sat with my big sister at dinner. I couldn't get to sleep and so I snuck out in the middle of the night," and the story continued.

Water-Bob clapped his hands and looked like he was biting his nails down where he sat beside Nico as her brother told the story. A story of monster's prowling the hallway, a head teacher that wasn't a teacher but a monster, of a satyr who had been sent to protect them and finding out his father was a god though he didn't know who. Of the first time he met Percy Jackson all of twelve years old. The way he had held riptide and fought, cracking jokes and accidentally being incredible all at the same time. Hazel watched as Not-Nico spoke with an animation, his hands chasing after his points as if to illustrate them, and she had never seen him so at ease. So himself.

 _He looks… alive._

It wasn't until that moment that she realized, watching the story unfold before her eyes, that Nico wasn't trying to make himself as small and inconsequential as possible. He wasn't trying to blend in with the shadows or diminish himself. He didn't look like just being alive meant he was failing at something she could never quite put her finger on. Not-Nico was bright eyed and vivacious, recounting to his friend the highlights of meeting his first hero and realizing that he could be one too, maybe, if he just learned how. The story skipped back and forth through time, water-Bob laughing and slapping the shore each time he found something funny, wringing a water-cloth in his hand when a portion of the story was tense. They ended on the battle of Manhattan and Morpheus putting the city to sleep so the mortals wouldn't witness things even the mist could not shield them from. How Percy had lead forces against Kronos and protected the city, overwhelming a Titan and killing countless monsters, and while he might not have been the demigod of the Great Prophecy but without him they would have been lost. And of course he recounts his own part, convincing Hades to join the fight and when Percy's mother showed up with a gun shooting a Laistrygonian giant (because Percy was nothing if not his mother's son).

"And when Zeus offered him immortality he turned it down so that my dad and minor gods and goddess could be recognized, so that any demigod children must be claimed by their thirteenth birthday. He didn't ask for anything for himself."

"Because he's a real hero."

"Yeah, Bob, he is."

Throughout it all there was one common theme across the whole of it— Percy. Beside her, the son of Poseidon watched the story unfold growing more and more green.

"When will you see him again?"

"I'm not too sure, buddy."

"You could invite him. There are so many rooms, Bob could set up the one across from yours…"

Not-Nico sat up and shook his head. "He would if he could, Bob."

"Heroes are busy," water-Bob lamented.

"But he asks about you, how you're doing. I told him you made employee of the month again. He was impressed."

"I never— I never asked about Bob. I never said any of those things," Percy whispered.

"We are lucky to have such a good friend."

"We are," Not-Nico echoed.

The water forms stopped moving like puppets who had been hung; Hazel's stomach clenched. She turned and beside her, tears trailed down his cheek and his good hand had lifted to his mouth. Styx sat silently before them, watching the two demigods but not offering any explanation for what she had shown. Besides showing her a side of her brother that she had never known (and her heart broke at the thought of that, that there were facets of her brother she would never get to know), Hazel couldn't figure it out.

 _Why call him here? Why for this?_

"They often sat on my banks. Bob thought it peaceful and Nico often joined him. There were many conversations and on those many occasions I listened."

"I thought you said you two weren't close?" Hazel whispered as she turned to Percy.

"We weren't," he murmured. "Not like— not like that."

"Then why would he…" her voice trailed off, golden eyes moving from Percy to Styx, unable to finish her question. Styx watched the exchange between them without saying a word. The two forms, made entirely of her waters and yet so realistic that the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, remained frozen with nothing more to say, no more to do. Beside her, Percy pushed himself onto his knees and shuffled forward, his hand not quite outstretched but not quite by his side, either. Like he wanted to touch Nico's form and yet he couldn't bring himself to do so either. "I swear I felt him earlier. Not like he was _physically_ here but his… presence."

Percy turned back to her, his large eyes shimmering but dark. "On the riverbed."

"What?"

"He was with me on the riverbed. I— I imagined him, anyway." Percy whispered, his voice cracking and his hand still frozen half a length away from his body but not quite touching the life-sized-water-not-Nico. "Before the elevator doors closed… he wouldn't let me stay. He wouldn't let me be the one to save him."

Styx remained still watching the son of Poseidon kneeling before her, he didn't turn his gaze to her as he spoke. She tilted her head, hands folded in her lap, the small duck having settled at some point during the tale. "No, that is not something he would have allowed." For a second there is no sound but the bubbling of the river whispering as it runs its course through the Underworld and the three sit as still as the water replicas.

Percy is the first to move and his fingers are a breath away from touching the water version of her brother before the two figures fall as if so many buckets of water were poured, gravity greedily snatching them back towards the ground. They gush down the bank and back into the running river leaving the son of Poseidon to snatch his hand back towards himself as if the very action had burned him. Maybe it's the sudden motion, the way the other teenager sags where he's kneeling, or some left over rage-water-remnants in her still dripping curls but Hazel let out a frustrated growl.

Nothing made sense!

"Why didn't the scepter save him? Why didn't he keep it and save himself?"

Yelling at a goddess wasn't the smartest thing she'd ever done but the daughter of Pluto wanted to be done with whatever the _thing_ they were doing was. She wanted to go back to the Argos II and sleep until the next day, dreamless, and free.

"It was never meant to save him, my dear. It was only meant to help him."

"Fat lot of good it did him—"

"—Hazel—"

"—because he's dead! It didn't—"

"—Hazel—"

"— Do anything for him."

"Hazel! It did exactly what it was supposed to do. He used the orb to… I don't know… to harness his powers or something."

"What are you talking about?"

"Nico stopped Tartarus. It was… I've never seen anything like it. The elevator was going so fast and I was pinned against the wall by shadows— I wouldn't leave him but he _made_ me and I said horrible things to him so he'd let me go, so I could save him or at least so I could stay with him— but it was like a tsunami of dark and everything it touched… he stopped Tartarus. He used the orb, it glowed, but dark like shadows, and… He held off an entire army of monsters so I could get away."

Hazel's eyes widened; Percy had promised her answers, eventually. There wasn't much she knew about it, some of it she could cobble together herself: they had gotten to the doors of death (but through what trials?), Percy had come back (but at what cost?), and the elevator had disappeared just as quickly as the demigod had fallen through it (so they must have broken the chains that held it in place). Beyond that… well, beyond that the daughter of Pluto had no idea about any of those minutes in Tartarus, especially not the last. She had no idea about _any_ of her brother's trip in Tartarus the first time beyond his capture… and the second time was no different. The only person who could give her any answers was kneeling before her and as much as she wanted to give him time, as much as she wanted to be understanding about his inability to tell her because the world was ending and he needed— no, _they needed_ him _—_ to put on his game face, she wasn't sure how much longer she could being in the dark. Hazel growled, clenching and opening her hands into fists over and over again as if she could leech her upset away with the action. It didn't make her feel any better and eventually her shoulders drooped.

"The scepter was never meant to save him, little one. He knew that when he accepted it from me," Styx finally answered. "It was a means to an end. The gods, split between their natures, have had—" she paused as if choosing her words carefully, "unforeseen consequences. Never has such a schism occurred before. You have witnessed yourself the effect it has had on those more _divided_ natures."

"What does any of that have to do with my brother?"

 _Hazel Levasquez, you're going to get your face melted right off,_ she could practically hear Leo's voice in her head.

The look the goddess gave to her was blunt but cutting, the kind that wore down mountains to make valleys and Hazel bowed her head. "One of those unforeseen consequences included the integrity of the fabric of fate… Nico was able to do something he never should have been able to in plucking the daughter of Athena from her place."

"You mean—"

"She was meant to fall alongside you." Styx answered. "Everything from there is different. Decisions are not what they were meant to be… and I cannot speak on the matter with any expertise. I don't even think the gods truly understand the loom of fate as the sisters do but the change was not without a cost."

"His life," Percy whispered.

" _A_ life. Nico chose for it to be his own. No demigod child has ever been through Tartarus before, never mind twice. The potential consequences… they are unfathomable. Even the gods could not say. But the reason for his choice," the goddess trailed off and cast her gaze down upon the duck nestled in her lap as if it were not for her to speculate despite all that she had said, "that is not for me to say."

"You said you had something for me, something that was missing. I don't— I don't understand—"

"And I have given you them, son of Poseidon, but at a certain point we must be honest with ourselves. Nico learned that in the end."

For a moment, Percy didn't move and Hazel couldn't breathe, though she couldn't say why. It's like they were all frozen waiting for something to happen, something to be done, some mystery to be revealed and though her mind was racing she couldn't say what thoughts were running through them. If water was building against a dam it burst with a single exhale, words partly whispered and partly choked, as the son of Poseidon curled into the ball on the riverbed.

"He burned up…. J-just like you. He was consumed."

"Yes, little one, he did. But why?"

"Because he loved me."

Hazel's eyes widened as she watched Styx stroke the other's hair as the teenager broke. Something inside him gave and he was a crying shaking mess with a look unlike anything she had ever seen before. Maybe she was having an out-of-body experience but for a moment she didn't do anything but blink whilst Percy's words echoed around and around in her head.

 _The story. Percy. The story. His dreams. The story. The guilt. The story. A life. The story._

Each heartbeat was another thought adding to the confusion and so Hazel sat unmoving.

"I didn't know," Percy moaned, face buried in his arm. Small Bob, finally ignoring the duck, approached his friend and nuzzled at the demigod's hair with a concerned yowl.

"Some things we are experts at hiding, especially from ourselves. Nico was consumed with darkness his whole life, but it was not the darkness that took him. In the end he was consumed by love and there are worse ways to fade from this world, little one." With a final caress of his hair, Styx leaned closer her lips pressed briefly to Percy's temple. "Do not forget your promises."

Styx disappeared leaving Percy curled in a fetal position upon the embanking, his shoulders shaking, and Hazel too stunned as she stared on to do anything at all except wonder how in her father's name they were going to make it back.


	18. Some Things We Don't Know

_Where the Shadows Meet the Sea_

Chapter 18

 _Some Things We Don't Know And Some Things We Don't Want To Know_

Piper

* * *

Piper slipped away leaving Percy and Hazel to talk about Nico. It wasn't that she was uncomfortable with Hazel's dead brother's name being spoken or the fact that it might upset her friend but it was the way the older teenager whispered her name. There was a look, one she couldn't quite decipher but from the subtle changes and micro-shifts in his expression there was something there. _Multiple_ things there. Her mother wasn't the goddess of emotional expression but children of Aphrodite could pick up on _things_ and Percy had a whole lot of _things_ beneath the surface. What exactly, Piper wasn't sure and it didn't really feel like her place to find out so she'd quietly scuttled away after giving a reassuring squeeze to Hazel's shoulder.

As she wandered back below the ship part of her wondered if his dreams were part of the reason the son of Poseidon was having trouble sleeping. The things that he saw when he closed his eyes, Tartarus, whatever happened to Nico, whatever happen _to them_ , she couldn't begin to imagine. The look in his eyes pulled at something inside of her, some string wound tight around something buried so deep within her she wasn't exactly sure what it was or what it meant. Piper tugged at the feather woven in her hair and before she realized it her feet had carried her straight to Leo's room.

 _Strange._

She hadn't meant to but her hand hovered to knock. Before she had a chance the door opened and the son of Hephaestus crashed into her dropping whatever he'd been fidgeting with on the ground with a crash. The _thing_ — whatever it was— slowed as it fell and she was in a stop-motion-animation watching with frozen muscles as it clattered and shattered, the sound echoing through her skull and up her spine. The hairs on her arms stood on end as her breath caught in her throat and her vision went hazy around the edges not quite like a vision, not like looking in Katoptris but different. Like two pictures superimposed over one another.

Piper dropped to her knees hoping the motion would ground her. Piece after piece was gathered and her fingers shook as she scrambled to gather all the shards of metal and glass and wire and things she wasn't sure about. Pressure pressed against her eyes and the daughter of Aphrodite bit her lip.

 _You will not pass out_ , she scolded herself. _You're just having a minor panic attack or something._

"Piper!?" He exclaimed surprised and stood gawking for a moment before he dropped down next to her and picked up the broken pieces of scrap. "I didn't see you." Not that he would have; the daughter of Aphrodite had been literally perched with hand poised to knock in his doorway. With his eyes always cast down on whatever it was he was tinkering with and he'd probably spotted her sandaled feet about three seconds before colliding with her.

"Sorry." Her voice sounded further away than Leo's.

"You don't have to apologize."

"I was lost in thought and I just—" Piper continued with a shake of her head as she tried to clear it. Why was her throat feeling scratchy and tight? Swallowing was difficult. _What's wrong with me?_ She wondered and held out the pieces of whatever-it-was to him. "I don't know." She admitted.

"Are you okay?" Leo asked as his dark eyes caught her own. The destroyed pieces of his forgotten invention were dropped inside the tool belt and disappeared into the magical wasteland of practicalities he could call upon at a moment's notice. Piper watched with curiosity as his grease stained hands (right down to the cuticles, no amount of scrubbing would erase it fully) emerged from it only to wipe themselves on the cloth that had at some point become an affixed staple like some practical fashion accessory for the belt. The thing probably weighed more than he did, magic or not, and he hardly noticed but even more than that he _didn't know_ that he didn't notice. Piper had tried the thing on and it must have been like Thor's hammer or something because she clearly wasn't worthy. The thing had nearly taken her down with it.

"I don't know." The words caught in her throat, dying on her lips.

Leo narrowed, the warm brown of his gaze sending heat through her cheeks and she dropped her eyes to the floor. _Come on, girl, keep your shit together._ By the time she looked back up, Leo had stood and she watched as he extended his arm offering his hand to help her to her feet. She was frozen once more, kneeling, staring at it and her vision went fuzzy. Leo's calloused palm facing upwards inviting her to take hold of it not because she was weak or needed help but because she was upset.

 _Are you okay?_ The words echoed in her head but his voice was softer, a little higher and maybe cracking a little as it hadn't entirely settled.

His fingernails were bitten down to the quick and even though they'd clearly been scrubbed clean there was still stains of something he'd taken apart and put back together clinging to the beds of his nails. They weren't dirty, just worn. There was something reassuring about that and she had reached out and clung to it.

 _He's not taking my calls_. The sound of her own voice echoed, the pressure behind her eyes building and Piper closed them, trying to take a breath and when she opened her eyes the hazy superimposed washed out image in the background had faded. There was just the hallway of the _Argos II_ and Leo standing before her.

"Piper?" He asked again, her name was soft on his lips. His hand was still held out, more calloused but fingers just as nimble, offering the same sort of comfort he had… she didn't know when. That wasn't her memory. That wasn't anything she knew. That was… like watching a movie. But his hand stayed waiting for her, offering reassurance and for whatever reason she couldn't bring herself to reach across the space between them and take it. Piper pressed her sweaty, shaking palms against her thighs and stood up.

"Piper?" Her lungs felt like they were burning and her knees felt like they'd been melted or replaced with wet noodles.

"I—" although she started, her knees started to give as the floor tilted, unsteady beneath her. Before she could hit the deck and look like an even bigger freaking mess than she clearly was, Leo caught her, arm around her and hoisted her back up. The suddenness of her fall and the son of Hephaestus must have over corrected because he hit the half open door to his room but the thing with it being half open was that it immediately swung the rest of the way open and the two of them crashed to the floor. Piper lay sprawled on top of Leo, their chests pressed together, her face in the crook of his neck with just inches between her nose and the floor. She could feel his heart thrumming like the wings of a hummingbird between them.

 _What? Who's not taking your calls?_

 _My father… my calls are being forwarded to his fucking assistant. She… she told me he needs to 'focus' on this role. She hung up on me!_

The words came from… somewhere. Piper didn't know where. _What the fuck is wrong with you?_ But even scolding herself, Piper couldn't shake the feeling of a deja vous as the foreign-but-familiar voices echoed in her head. The first was Leo's and the second was her own but she didn't know when they'd been spoken. Her heart hammered and tears pricked the backs of her eyes; she couldn't breathe. Air wouldn't come.

"Piper?" When he whispered her name, his breath tickled her neck and Piper felt her heart skip. "Where did you go? Are you okay?"

"I— I'm sorry," the words caught in her throat as she found her limbs and pushed herself up off of him. When she stood up, she took a few strides into the mess that was his bedroom and laughed something hysterical. _You sound like a freaking mad woman, Pipes. Yeah, well, that's probably because you're going insane and internally talking to yourself_. She replied to her own stream of consciousness. Her feet kept moving, pacing in a circle. "What the fuck is wrong with me?" The words were muffled by the fingers covering her face as she tried to scrub some sense into herself and when that didn't work she smacked her cheeks making some hollow echo-y noise as she exhaled.

"Are you worried?"

"What?" Piper glanced at him over her hands and wasn't sure what he meant but then again she felt like a balloon and someone had released her string and she was scrambling not to float away on the wind. It might take her to the voices in her head, to the washed out not-demigod-visions struggling to bubble up from she wasn't sure where.

"I'll come." Leo offered, his warm eyes soft as he took slow steps towards her and she wasn't sure if that's because she might fall on him again or because she might get spooked and she appeared utterly insane.

 _Probably the latter,_ Piper would have bet.

"I don't understand."

Leo lifted a hand and pulled her hands away from her face and gave them a gentle squeeze. They were rough but they were softer than anything she could remember. "You don't have to go alone with Annabeth. If this is some pre-quest nerves because you don't think she's going to have your back and you're worried, you don't even have to ask. If you want me to Piper," he paused for a moment and she watched as Leo Valdez the impish jokester and all around foot-in-mouth-putter did something Piper had never seen before: stood still and looked into her eyes.

Piper's heart beat, a hummingbird's wings inside of her chest and her breath caught in her throat again.

"If you need me, Piper, I'm there."

Kaleidoscope eyes dropped to where he held her hands and when she blinked, her vision blurred but not from the vision through not-current-Piper's-eyes of not-current-Leo. It wasn't until she blinked again and she felt the wetness against her cheek and went to draw in a breath only to choke that the daughter of Aphrodite realized she was crying. Her hands slipped from his and she scrubbed at her face with a broken laugh. Nothing was funny but her body had a mind of its own.

"Do you remember?" As she lifted her gaze once more, Piper looked for any sign that the other demigod understand what she was talking about but Leo's eyebrows lifted in confusion.

"What?"

"Do you remember before?" When his expression didn't change she exhaled and took began pacing again, wrapping her arms around herself. "Just now… it was like there was something else there. This is going to sound crazy but it was like one of those old movie reels except the sound is under water and the focus is blurred out and maybe there's two film strips trying to play at the same time… the one that's _right now_ and another one that… one that I don't know."

When she turned back, Leo's hands had disappeared back into the toll belt he wore and he was fiddling with something once more, maybe fixing the contraption she had broken earlier. "And what was the movie that you didn't know?" The ship creaked and his voice was hardly loud enough to hear even in the cramped confines of his room.

"I was crying because my father wouldn't take my call and you offered me your hand," even saying the words out loud made Piper hyper aware of every inch of her body. "He needed to focus on his movie and his calls were forwarding to his assistant."

"Oh."

"Do you remember before?" Piper asked again.

Leo didn't say anything but from the look on his face... she wasn't ready to know what the look on his face meant. The cabin didn't have enough air and the walls felt like they were pressing in all around her and at the end of the day Piper might be a hundred things but she wasn't brave. She was still that scared little girl acting out in hopes of just five more minutes of her busy father's time and so she did the one thing she was so good at: she fled. She fled with a quick hug and a whispered apology because she couldn't stay.

The sun hung overhead, stifling and unforgiving in the light it gave. The daughter of love plucked at the front of her tank top, pulling it away from her sweat slick chest and used the fabric to attempt to create some sort of air and fan herself. It didn't help and as she stood on a hill overlooking the ruins of ancient Sparta a few hours after leaving the Argos II, the only thing they had accomplished was world's longest awkward silence sitting between them on a mission ever undertaken by demigods. They had searched everywhere else— the museums, the town, throughout the streets of the boxy white buildings but kept a cautious distance from the ancient ruins. The daughter of Athena never said anything (only occasionally glanced over her shoulder to make sure that she was following her) but led the way.

A sigh was the closest thing to a cool breeze that either of them were going to find.

"Is this whole thing going to be you pretending that it's not awkward because I'm not here and then I pretend that I don't know that so this isn't the most awkward thing in the world? Because honestly, Annabeth, I don't think either of us exactly do subtle and this is getting ridiculous."

"Who said I was pretending it wasn't awkward?" Annabeth asked with a pointed look as she mopped the sweat of her forehead with the sleeve of her t-shirt. The blonde's steely eyes met Piper's for the first time in weeks.

"Ooookay. So this is a Jason and Percy situation." She mumbled to herself as she adjusted her backpack to hand on one shoulder so she could root through it with her free hand until she pulled out a bottle of water. It was already as warm as the suffocating air but it helped her tongue feel a little less like sandpaper. Although it was a lost cause, the younger teen offered Annabeth the water bottle but she turned her nose down at it.

"I don't see anything. Are you sure that you weren't just dreaming?"

 _Yes, because if I were dreaming or making it up I would immediately choose the person who can stand me the least._

The day started out awkward. Okay, so that was a total understatement. It was a whole freaking mess purposely not watching Annabeth as she got twitchy across the table at the idea of having to go on a quest with Piper before trying to talk everyone out of it altogether or at the very least convince them that someone else should come. She was seriously starting to regret not taking Leo up on his offer for him to come as well. _Leo,_ the name made her wince. _Better not to think about that either. Honestly, I'm not even sure what happened but it was just_ … she shook her head. That whole moment was complicated and she didn't have time for complicated. Being stuck with someone who was just as likely to feed her to Earthborn as she was to abandon her completely wasn't really reassuring.

Then there had been the fight she had with Percy. The remaining five out of seven hadn't needed to hear the fight above deck but when Annabeth had stalked passed with her ponytail bouncing behind her, footsteps echoing on the floor. Jason had known she was upset and he had moved to get up from the table but then Percy had rushed into the room, eyes down and the son of Jupiter knew what he was pressing the other guy's buttons. Then there was the whole fight and she'd seen it coming since the son of Poseidon had been back. Jason was love sick and it wasn't overt he daughter of Aphrodite anymore. She had noticed the change in his energy and its focus was clear: Annabeth. Even if he wouldn't have act on it. Even if he wouldn't come out and tell her. Even if he wouldn't admit it to himself, not while the golden couple were still a couple.

And that fight? Percy had said some really fucked up things but even as he'd blown up on Jason, he was punching the blonde superman's stupid buttons right the hell back. They did the whole testosterone macho whatever thing but the moment Piper felt the hairs on her arms start to stand on end she knew it was coming. Later, when she'd fled from Leo's room to the deck of the _Argos II_ , Piper had grabbed Frank.

"You need to keep an eye on them while we're gone. At least— at least keep an eye on Jason."

 _Because he should know better._ And he was the only one of them in his right mind.

"I'll make sure he keeps his distance."

"Thank you." And if the son of Mars thought it was because of lingering feelings for him he was wrong but Piper hadn't bothered to say anything.

"I think maybe Percy and Hazel are going to need some time alone." The Canadian had lifted a thick brow in question and she'd lowered her voice. "He's having dreams. About Nico. I think… I think maybe he was ready to talk about it."

It.

Tartarus.

What had happened.

 _It._

Her eyes cased the horizon and once again fell on the ruins of old Sparta. Annabeth might want to avoid angered spirits or creepy ghost towns but the town proper was a total bust and it hadn't looked like anything in her dreams anyway.

"No, Annabeth. I wasn't _just_ dreaming. I wasn't even asleep. I was looking into Katoptris and I'm sorry…" the words died on her lips. She was about to apologize that the other girl was stuck with her when it was clear she'd rather eat Coach Hedge's fingernail clippings but then Piper remembered what Nike had said to her, the bound goddess finding a moment of wholeness from the overwhelming charm-speak laced voice directed at her.

 _You are not inferior._

 _Do not apologize for things you do not regret._

 _Do not make yourself less because others cannot be more._

Straightening up, she turned to face Annabeth and caught the other's grey eyes like dull storm clouds. "No, you know what Annabeth? I'm sick of your attitude. Listen, I know that you'd rather not be here. I know that you'd rather be anywhere but with me but we're both part of this thing that's bigger than us and it's certainly bigger than whatever resentment you have towards me." A floodgate had been opened and the moment that she started speaking, Piper couldn't stop. She approached the other and held her hands out, palms up. "I'm sorry for what happened, to you and to Jason. To what _my_ charmspeak did to both of you. Honestly, if you think that you're freaking scared of it try being me. Sometimes it slips out before I even know that it's there, like a broken dimmer for a light. I think I've turned it down or turned it off and then it's blinding and I'm not _trying_ to hurt anyone." Like a balloon that had lost too much air, her shoulders began to slump. "Jason's already forgiven me and I hope that eventually you will, too, because honestly I think you have enough going on without adding _this_ ," she motioned between the two of them, "to your list."

Wide eyed, Annabeth opened her mouth to say something but if the older girl had looked like she was going to snap and say something harsh the look was fleeting and eventually those stormy eyes dropped to her shoes. "We should probably check out the ruins." It was the most logical and reasoned thing she'd said all morning.

 _You know things are bad when the daughter of Athena is being overwhelmingly ruled by her emotions._

Piper fell into step next to her as they made their way towards the ruins and was glad that she'd swapped her sandals for sneakers. The remains were built into the side of a hill. _More like a freaking mountain_. At least she had tried. She had apologized and if Annabeth wasn't ready to talk through it or make an effort than there was really nothing that Piper could do about it. It wasn't like she was one of those girls who had to be friends with everyone. _Fuck, we don't even have to like one another but being civil and knowing she's not going to push you down an ancient or feed you to a rabid Laistrygonian well would be nice._ So much for small favors.

"Can I ask you something?"

Annabeth's voice startled Piper so much that she missed her step and nearly planted herself face first on one of the worn white stones she supposed was meant to be stairs. The feather in her hair floated as if on a breeze; maybe it was laughing at her. Honestly, it wouldn't shock the daughter of love at this point.

"Yeah, go ahead."

Multiple times, Annabeth opened her mouth only to close it. Whatever she wanted to ask, the other hadn't found the words for it and it made a shiver travel up her spine. _Maybe should have asked what it was about before, you know, jumping the gun, McLean._ Piper hoisted herself up ruins because the side of the hill was too steep but they had crumbled away leaving four to five of the steps gone. Piper reached in front of her and placed her palms and fore arms on the rough sand covered stone and hoisted herself up scraping her knees in the process. Maybe it was the process of being engrossed in climbing or trying not to fall or the fact that neither of them could really afford to look at the other but she finally found her voice.

"Your siblings… some of them knew how I felt about Percy before he did. Before _I_ did."

It was a statement not so much a question so Piper didn't offer anything beyond a _mmm_ to let her know she was listening.

"Is it the same for you?"

"Can I tell how you feel about Percy?" Somehow that didn't feel like what the other teenager was trying to ask her and from the sigh of frustration that wasn't it. When she didn't immediately clarify, Piper turned to her. "Or how Percy feels about you?"

The way Annabeth's eyes drifted away to the horizon gave her all the answer she needed.

"You expect too much of him. That's what… that's what he _feels_ , anyway. The way you look at him like he's not really there… like you're waiting for _him_ to come back and wake up because he's been sleep walking and he's in the middle of a night terror. He sees the way that you look at him and he's not asleep. He resents it."

 _He resents you,_ went unsaid.

Maybe honesty wasn't the best policy given Piper wasn't sure where Annabeth stood on pushing her into a volcano but the daughter of love was an advocate of don't ask if you don't want to know. Hell, that's probably why she ran away from Leo before he could answer the question she'd left him with: _do you remember before_?

"And Nico?" The name caught her off guard, immediately she paused in her tracks and turned to face the other girl. Annabeth sat down on one of the bleached stones and looked up at her. "Nico," the name must have tasted like ash from the way her lips formed around it, "could you tell how he felt? When he was with us. Could you tell?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"He left camp at ten. His sister died on a quest with Percy and when he made it back he had to break the news to him. Before he'd left, I mean Percy was only a kid himself, but he had promised to keep an eye on Bianca. He promised that she would be okay but she died and… well, he didn't take it so well. Nico nearly swallowed Percy in the earth and skeletons started clawing their way up from the ground. Hades claimed him then and he was so scared of his own powers, he only just about closed the ground and banished the dead before he disappeared. Percy didn't go after him. He regrets it but he was a kid, too. Their relationship has always been complicated." Piper nodded not sure how the whole origins story really fit into things until the question continued. "Could you tell how Nico felt about Percy?"

Percy waking up, not lucid, fighting against his friends trapped in some nightmare of a battle from Tartarus. The look in his muddied green eyes as he asked for Nico and realized that the other wasn't with him. The screams in the middle of the night when sleep took him. The freezing rain and tossing sea as it churned just as the sea prince did from nightmares or memories or some combination of the two. The ship flooding from the inside as Percy trapped in some hallucination crying for Nico burst all the pipes. Percy on the deck of the _Argos II_ between Hazel and Piper with a crack in his voice as he admitted to dreaming of Nico.

 _Oh._

Nico hadn't been a fixture of Camp Half Blood when she and Jason and Leo had arrived. From the seasoned campers, they knew who he was and whispered about the boy who was as dark as the shadows save for his skin nearly as pale as the moonlight. Then he had stopped appearing at camp and it wasn't until later they realized that he had fallen into Tartarus and was trapped in a jar. Percy had fought to save him, to find him before it was too late. And after they found him? Nico was skittish around the living, always above in the crow's nest. But those dark eyes drifted to Percy when no one was looking. And then when Percy and Annabeth had been slipping over the edge towards Tartarus with Arachne's web tangled around them, pulling them down, he'd saved the blonde first.

 _Oh._

Piper broke eye contact and surveyed around them looking for a sign of where they were meant to go. "I'm not my siblings." She didn't _try_ to know. Honestly, most of the time she didn't _want_ to know. She could but it felt like some bizarre invasion of privacy and misuse of, well, she wouldn't exactly call it a gift.

"I knew and I never said anything to anyone, not him or Percy or anyone else. And then we get into this stupid fight and I just… I wanted to hurt Percy for hurting me. So I said something."

"Do you think Percy knew?"

"Are you kidding? Absolutely not." The laugh was hollow. "No. He thought… he thought Nico had a crush on me and seeing the two of us together was hard for him. I mean, he said so and it made sense…"

"If it weren't Nico."

"If it wasn't him." She agreed.

"But now Percy knows… and he knows that _you_ know."

"Yeah. Yeah… something like that."

Piper opened her mouth to say something when she saw it: fire. It spewed forth in a giant wall towards the sky from further up the hill somewhere in the distance. Reaching out, she took hold of the other's shoulder and pointed with her free hand. The sight of fire sent a freezing chill up her spine but she swallowed down her fear.

"Guess we follow the fire."

"Guess so."


	19. Love, Lies, Loss and Other

_Where the Shadows Meet the Sea_

Chapter 16

 _Love, Lies, Loss and Other Dirty Four Letter Words_

Percy

* * *

When they stepped into the fading light of dusk, Percy felt it was too bright. Or maybe, he wondered, his skin was too translucent so even the soft light of dusk might burn away what little of him was left. Mrs. O'Leary whined and shoved her muzzle into the small of Percy's back, right where the curse of Achilles lived a lifetime ago. It was invulnerable now. The son of Poseidon felt nothing, not panic, not like he used to once his memories returned, not because he longed for a fantom protection washed away by the waters of the Little Tiber or because he was paranoid about a permeable weakness that once lived there. The only thing that Percy Jackson felt, besides heavy body and soul, besides an ache in his eyes and his throat, besides ready for an eternity of sleep was the smack of Mrs O'Leary's wet tongue up the back of his neck and through his hair as the force of it nearly knocked him over.

Shadow travel had made his legs jelly and she was the size of a minibus.

 _Small for a hellhound her age,_ he could almost hear Nico remind him.

 _But large enough to mow me down without trying._

Percy turned and placed his hand upon her snout and leaned against her in a one armed embrace. "Thank you, Mrs. O'Leary." He whispered the words into her fur and she whined again this time lower. He might not be able to speak to animals who lived in the shadows the way he could horses or aquatic life but he felt the sound to his core. "I miss him, too," he whispered so quietly he wasn't sure he made a sound except for the look that Hazel gave him as he pulled away.

"Percy—"

"Don't." He cleared his throat. "I know you're tapped but do you think you have enough juice for a ball?" The roman demigod arched a golden eyebrow at him questioningly. "Red squeaky ones are her favorite. N—" he started but his throat closed around the name and he was sobbing on the bed of the Styx once again. Percy swallowed and started again. "Nico always had one for her."

Hazel nodded, lids falling closed over red rimmed eyes the color of metal. Her hair floated around her head like a halo as from nothing a shimmery gossamer light formed over her upturned palm. A moment later her fingers closed around a red ball, a gentle squeak causing the hell hound to stomp her front pars on the ground hard enough for it to shake the earth. Percy was positive anything— or anyone— hit by her wagging back half was a goner. Her tail alone was like a massive whip.

The daughter of Pluto pulled her arm back and threw the ball with all of her might. Mrs. O'Leary took off, disappearing into the shadows with a final determined triumphant bark. For a long moment they stood in silence staring at the growing darkness. Percy wondered if Hazel was thinking about her brother as hard as he was trying not to but he didn't ask and eventually the moment ended.

"We should head back. The others have probably noticed we're gone."

But he didn't respond beyond blinking. No matter how long he stared at the shadows, thy would not dance. They would not sway and slide aside as Nico di Angelo appeared from wherever he had been hiding. They would not pool around the demigod's feet or forever look like they were stretching, reaching out to pull him into their cool embrace because even when he wasn't calling them to him they always looked to be calling to him. Styx's voice echoed in his head.

 _He knew what it was like to live his life in the dark._

Percy wished he could wrap them around himself and disappear.

Small Bob bumped against his ankle pulling him from his thoughts. "Yeah," Percy agreed. "We should."

"Percy?" Hazel asked in a way that sounded as if it had not been the first time.

"Yeah?"

"You coming?"

 _Please_ , he wished but the shadows cast by the sun setting on the horizon didn't move. "Coming," he agreed as he turned away and fell into step silently beside her. Mrs. O'Leary wasn't exactly precise in her shadow traveling but it was a far cry better than their other plan. Hazel was too exhausted to manipulate the labyrinth and the moment they had exited they could no longer use its passages reliably— they'd just as likely come out in the middle of Wyoming or Australia as they would Sparta. Percy hadn't exactly been a fountain of alternative ideas. In fact, he had contributed exactly zero as the goddess left them on her shores, Percy sobbing and Hazel dumbfounded. He couldn't think at first, let alone speak and through tears the daughter of Pluto had finally asked if they should call out for her father. That had pulled Percy from the river bed, he had wiped his eyes on the shoulder of his t-shirt and his nose, too, if he was being honest.

"No," he'd said. "If he doesn't already know about Nico… we can't afford for him to lose it. Or refuse to let you go now that Death's Doors are back in operation. Or smite me. Not that I'm against it but I think we should probably finish the quest before he shoots the messenger." Percy had swallowed. "When it's over, I have to see him anyway. For Nico. I promised. But not yet."

Mrs. O'Leary must have heard them or smelt them. Or maybe she was looking for the oversized silver haired Janitor that wouldn't be returning any time soon. Or Nico. Whatever the reason, he wasn't going to complain. They had walked in silence along the shore hoping for a solution to present itself the way it sometimes does for demigods and sure enough, Mrs. O'Leary had come bounding. Small Bob had hissed and thrown a fit clawing his way up the back of Percy's legs until he perched hissing on Percy's shoulders. Of course the hellhound had taken an immediate interest in the pint sized skeleton cat and let out a howl. Small Bob had roared like a lion leaving it clear that although he was small for his size, he had a bark that told of a malicious bark. Mrs. O'Leary had been far more hesitant to bother the cat.

Their footsteps kicked up dust and the older demigod could feel the way Hazel's golden eyes would wander to him. Whatever she wanted to say or ask was lost as they crossed the outskirts of Sparta toward the looming _Argos II_.

"I see them!"

Frank's voice travelled across on a humid breeze and Percy found his voice in time to turn to Hazel before they were descended upon by the others. "Thank you for coming with me." Frank was fast approaching in the form of an eagle and Jason flew on the wind beside him.

If she wanted to say anything — he had no idea what — it was punctuated by Frank hitting the ground on his own two feet, arms still half covered in feathers like some perverse angle or strange 3D tattoo. He scooped her up off of the ground and swung her around in a bear hug that probably crushed every organ in her body but the big guy had only gotten a ripped bod like two minutes ago so Percy could imagine he was still learning to drive the thing.

"I was worried! We thought maybe you'd been taken or—" he stopped before continuing.

Percy could imagine the 'we' included the pissed looking blonde son of Jupiter touching down in front of them. Percy didn't notice how the poisoned demigod managed to control the wind enough to keep sand and grit from kicking up in Hazel and Frank's eyes but of course nearly ground Percy's out of his eye sockets. Percy could only imagine the types of things he might have whispered in Frank's ear but honestly the son of Poseidon really couldn't fucking care less as he scrubbed dirt from his eyes.

Small Bob let out a growl of warning. Through the small tornado of dust, Percy noticed that Jason's forearm was bandaged and it made something sick inside of him pleasure.

"What were you thinking disappearing like that?" He demanded. Percy was pretty sure the boom was thunder and not Jason's voice.

Percy blinked again eyes finally free from crud (and probably with a legit excuse for being as red and puffy as they were), opened his mouth, lost the will to answer along with the will to pretend to care, and shook his head. He headed back to the ship, climbing aboard with the other calling after him.

 _Fucking try it,_ he thought darkly to himself.

"I told them you two would be fine." Leo said, clicking something together, some gadget that was unrecognizable from its base parts and probably the son of Hephaestus wouldn't know what it was until it was finished. "But those two… they worry. Just ignore them."

 _Already done_ , he thought to himself as he nodded. Percy's limbs felt like quick drying cement as weary legs took him across the deck and wandered below. Each step was a struggle and his vision was swimming, darkening at the edges and he staggered past the door to his room only to stop in front of one of the last doors. When they had rescued Nico from the jar he had looked like one of the ghosts that came when the child of Hades summoned. Waif thin, freckle spattered skin translucent enough to trace some of his veins, the skin under his eyes bruised. They had given him Coach Hedge's old room but for the life of him Percy wasn't sure that the son of Hades had ever used it. He always perched above them in the crow's nest. First to see dusk or the dawn. Far away from the seven as he could be while able to keep an eye on them.

The wood of the door was cool and rough under his hand. Percy wasn't sure what he was expecting but devastation, something deep and without end, crashed over him.

Their protector from afar.

 _Like so much of his life._

And it had been. Separate. Even when he was there. Distant. Quiet. Closed.

 _Forgotten,_ he thought. _You always forgot._

Fingers ran down the wood until they closed around the handle but he never quite got the strength to grip it tight and turn it. Before he could open the door— or admit that he was too much of a fucking coward to do it in the first place— the sound of feet in the hallway pulled him from his thoughts. From the drop in air pressure he knew it was Jason. Apparently he hadn't taken defeated silence and apathy as a 'full stop' in their conversation.

"You can't just disappear like that. We have a quest to finish. —And before you come up with some snarky nonsense about how you don't care… I know. I know you don't. But when you stop feeling like you hate the whole world, Percy, if you're going to even get the chance to get there, you're going to need a world to come back to. If we don't stop Gaea, you won't get that chance and neither will anyone else."

"I know." Percy murmured because somewhere inside of him, part of him that hadn't entirely forsook everything, knew. He released his grip on the door handle and dropped his hand back to his side.

"I—" the blonde stopped. "I was sort of expecting you to put up more of a fight than that."

"Caught me at a good time, I guess." Percy turned his back on the door. He wouldn't open it today. He wasn't sure what he hoped he might find, anyway. "Sorry if I worried you. I thought— honestly, I thought you would stop us if we told you."

"I probably would have." Jazon's blue eyes met his and the other shook his head. "Yeah, okay, I know I would have." For a moment there was silence between them before the former praetor cleared his throat. "Where did you go anyway? Hazel was pretty vague on the details."

"To get answers."

Jason looked more confused.

"Answers?" A voice piped up from behind the younger, blonder and slightly more scarred version of a could-be superman.

 _Annabeth._

Small Bob exhaled in what Percy could only interpret as a sigh and he thought, _yeah me freaking, too, buddy._

She didn't sound as patient as Jason. The hallway was narrow and the blonde could-be-abercrombie-model son of Jupiter was broad so he had to turn and lean against the opposite cabin door to make room for Annabeth's slim frame. Freckles stood pale compared to the sunburned skin of her face. It made the grey of her eyes more severe. With her arms folded over her chest, Percy's girlfriend looked like the comic book description of impatient as she waited for an explanation to an unasked question. Honestly, all she needed was the tapping foot to go with her jutted out hip and she could have fit into any teenage drama.

"Hi to you, too, Annabeth."

She ignored his greeting. "Do you know how worried everyone was? Frank was beside himself about Hazel— "

"Jason already filled me in."

"He thought something had happened—"

"Since when do you care how everyone else feels?" Percy snapped before he could stop himself, the facade of patience gone. He shouldn't have said that— it was harsh and unfair but fuck if he was going to claw it back once it was out. Jason, who might have stuck his nose (see also, his stupid face) in their business that morning made the smarter (in Percy's opinion) decision to slowly back away and leave the couple alone.

"Real mature, Percy," she scoffed and all he could do was roll his eyes, probably feeding into whatever snap judgement comparison she was making between the man who stood before her and the Percy he was before. Maybe anything to do with patience had washed away when he'd gone for a swim in Styx but the son of Poseidon just shook his head and took a step forward to move past her.

Most people would have moved aside and made room. It was clear what Percy wanted from the position of his body but the blonde was unyielding and her eyes were grey. Grey, like the color of their death mist flesh as it peeled off of their bones, rotted and flaking away. Grey like Nico's complexion after Geras caught him in his grip and began sucking the years— the literal life— from him as if he were dragging on a cigarette and Nico was some sweet nicotine. She was unyielding and the hallway was narrow like the cell in the House of Night. Percy's heart was hammering in his ears and the hallway seemed to stretch longer and longer taking the only exit further and further away. It wouldn't be longer before all of the light was extinguished and he was left with the weight of his fallen friend in his arms as he tried to find his fucking way out of the mansion and bring him to safety.

Percy's lungs ached.

 _Air. I just need some air._

Percy pushed passed Annabeth, knocking her shoulder with his own as he tried to convince his legs which were quickly turning to stone to take him forward. His heart hammered and the son of Poseidon held his hand out as he attempted to keep from pitching over. His body twitched to fight, those quick-fire reflexes that were enhanced by the curse of Achilles burning as they perceived a potential threat.

 _Not everything is a threat._

But it was hard to convince the thing that had kept him alive in Tartarus to calm the eff down.

 _Air. You just need air_ , he tried reassuring himself again.

"Where do you think you're going?"

But the words were far away and his breaths were coming sharp and fast. A fog set in across his vision and everything happened far away, in slow motion, like gravity had been cranked up a thousand and he was hopelessly aware of every motion of his muscles as they attempted to pull him forward. Percy made it to the stairs before he felt a tug on his dead arm and his head swam as he turned to look behind him half expecting to see the children of Nyx with their knives and wicked grins as they carved him for their supper.

It took his brain a moment to realize that it was Annabeth, like an anchor, pulling him down. Normally he might have appreciated the grounding but he needed to get _out_ and she was keeping him in place. His heart hammered, the ever present demigod fight-or-flight response hardwired into him sparking to like a blazze that was quickly getting out of hand. Percy could practically hear Annabeth's heart beating in her chest, feel the sweat as it collected on the surface of her skin and ran down her back, feel the way her blood moved in her veins.

 _Don't_.

"Where are you going?"

"Away," he choked and it wasn't so much that he managed to tug his arm back as the son of Poseidon pitched forward and half fell up the stairs, crashed through the door and onto the deck. When the breeze hit his face the teenager felt his heart beat just a little easier and his lungs began to expand. Percy had pushed himself back up onto his elbow and began to sit up as Annabeth followed after him and kneeled beside him. Where her eyes had been severe they were softer; Percy looked away because he couldn't bring himself to see the color of them again.

"Oh, Percy," she murmured. Her tongue made a song against the back roof of her mouth and it set his teeth on edge. She offered him a hand but he didn't take it and she pretended not to notice. Percy pushed himself to his feet and tried to shake the fog from his vision and snap himself back to reality but everything remained fuzzy-around-the-edges.

 _You're fucking falling apart, Perce. Absolutely losing it._

The snapping of fingers brought him out of it. "Where are you right now?"

 _Probably in a freakin' straight jacket with the last few years of my life a vivid hallucination from the mental break I had. I probably snapped on Smelly Gabe and drowned his drunk passed out ass in our bathtub and made this whole fucking thing up._

And maybe that would be better. Better than fighting in wars. Better than watching people he cared about killed and hurt. Better than even a fraction of the horrors that he'd seen and accepted as normal because of who his father was and what that meant. Percy sighed, the boulder from earlier lodged back in his throat. Trying to get rid of it seemed a Sisyphean task but he swallowed again anyway.

At some point he became aware that Annabeth was still stood at his side, pinching the bridge of her nose and looking like the words she was speaking tasted bad but like medicine it was better to get it over by downing it quick then letting it linger. "—What I'm trying to say about earlier is that it was… okay. With Piper. The mission." The daughter of Athena looked like she wanted to jump overboard but when he said nothing she continued. "It was fine, OK, Perce? You were right." Maybe Annabeth Chase admitting to admit she was anything less than one-hundred-percent should have been enough to snap Percy like a rubber band out of this far-away-floating feeling that had him feeling like he was looking down on himself watching the world as it passed him by.

But instead all he saw was the blonde girl hair nearly bleached white from the sun, burnt skin smattered in freckles standing an arm's width away from a boy who looked like he hadn't quite washed all the Death Mist off of himself. A canyon of unspoken things stretched between them. The boy could reach out, he could make a bridge and find his way across. He could. Percy honestly believed that. But the boy was cracking at the seams and exhaustion weighed him down like five tons of cement.

"I'm really tired, Annabeth. Can we do this later?"

For a moment silence hung between them and just as the son of Poseidon, with wind in his hair and the scent of the sea in his nose, was about to breathe a sigh of relief her words came soft beside him. "We can't keep doing this. We can't keep pretending that nothing has happened and that there's nothing to talk about. You can't keep shutting down or running away. I _need_ you to talk to me."

"About what?"

"About everything."

And the boulder was back but this time it came with the pressure behind his eyes and honestly in all of the seventeen years of his life, Percy Jackson had never been so freaking exhausted. Part of him wanted to curl up into a ball and the let the daughter of Athena wrap her arms around him and hold him like he'd never disappeared. Her hand was warm against his arm and when he brought his eyes to look at her she looked like she had the first day he met her. It was natural to find himself in her arms, his one arm holding tight to the small of her back as he pressed his face into the crook of her neck.

"Let me help you, Seaweed Brain," she whispered the words into his hair.

"Help me what?" The words were strained.

"Work through things. We can make things go back to normal, huh? You and I, there's not anything we can't do when we're together. Let me help you find yourself again." She pulled back just enough to press a kiss to his neck below his ear and Percy's stomach tugged like a fish caught in a line. Sucking in a breath he pulled back and met her eyes, they were as misty as his own and without a doubt the teenager knew that she was genuine but what she wanted when she looked at him, hopeful and open? Percy could almost see the way her mind tried to logic how far he'd fallen from who he was and all the things they could do to push him back.

Annabeth meant well.

A tear ran down Percy's cheek and he chased it with the back of his hand. "I need to ask you something." The words felt bitter in his mouth and the answer was something he needed rather than anything he wanted. "Would you have taken my place?"

Blonde brows knit in the middle of her forehead. "What're you talking about?"

"If you could have taken my place and fallen instead, would you?"

There was a pause as she wrapped her arms around herself and opened her mouth. There was no sound at first but the fog was rolling back in softening the edges as the sun finally disappeared over the horizon leaving the moon and the stars. "That's stupid, Percy," she whispered. "You would— you'd never ask me—"

"I wouldn't." Out-of-body Percy said as he observed himself from far away. "I wouldn't, Annabeth. But would you? If you could, would you?" Maybe it's not real, these things in his head, the doubt in his heart. Maybe it's unfair but when he'd hung over the ledge clinging to her there had been no doubt in his mind. If he couldn't save her then he would fall with her. Nico had saved her and when he couldn't save Percy… Maybe it was unfair that his fatal flaw was personal loyalty but he had given it completely and without question to those he loved and just this once he needed to know if he had it back. He watched himself waiting like something out of a dream.

"Percy— that's… that's…" Annabeth sputtered and the girl who had always been able to articulate everything couldn't seem to grasp a word. Her blonde ponytail swished as she paced.

"When Nico saved you, did you ask him to take you back? Knowing what you know now, that we would fall, would you have?"

But she didn't find words any easier and with a nod the boulder disappeared from the back of his throat and a weight lifted from his chest.

"Okay," he sighed.

"It doesn't— that doesn't mean that I don't love you, Percy. It doesn't mean that h—" she cut herself off and rubbed at her eyes as she let out a frustrated growl. "It doesn't mean anything!"

Maybe she hadn't known it herself, that the son of Poseidon and daughter of Athena stood on uneven footing and from where she perched higher the view scared her. And for the first time Percy understood that they had never stood eye to eye because he has held her higher than perhaps she is capable of maintaining but he was young and loyal and idealistic and he had never questioned it. Because Annabeth was _smarter_ and let him know when he didn't know things or when he did things wrong and liked him anyway and that was love, wasn't it? Being better but liking someone anyway. Annabeth stood there, tears gathering in the corner of his girlfriend's eyes as her hands covered her mouth and she struggled to find something to say, but Percy felt like maybe even broken _he_ was more than she could give him. Because he would have done anything. He would have died for her. He wouldn't have thought twice and although he would never ask it of her now he knew.

"Percy—"

But as things came into focus there was a question burning the back of his throat like ice.

"Did you know?" Percy asked and the words curl like frostbite from his lips.

"I don't know what you mean. Percy, listen—"

"When he saved you… did you know? That if he couldn't save me that he wouldn't let me do it on my own?" The temperature dropped and where he gripped the rail of the ship for support he finds none. The air freezes around them, the humidity condensing to flakes of ice that fall like snowflakes that melt as soon as they hit the deck.

"That was _his_ choice!" Annabeth's mouth twisted and her hands clenched into fists but her eyes widened as her eyes turned upwards after the first flake touched upon her skin. "I never— Percy, it was his choice! He could have saved you but he saved me first."

"Answer the question, Annabeth!"

"This is—"

And that was answer enough, wasn't it? All he could do was laugh the withered sound rasping from lungs like he was choking. And maybe he was. Maybe he had bit off more than he could chew. Maybe he was choking on his own stupidity and ignorance and self-loathing.

"Did it make you feel better? That I would fall for you but at least I wouldn't have to be alone because he'd take your place?" The words tasted like acid and he might as well have thrown some on her from the way her cheeks blossomed red and she sobbed into her hands begging him to stop. The deck of the ship froze, ice tendrils snaking out in every direction. The floodgate of tears finally burst and Annabeth dropped to her knees on the deck, face in her hands. She reached out and tried to take his arm, tried to pull him down with her but his heart was a jackhammer and it threatened to break through his chest. He pulled his arm back so hard that she fell onto the floor and didn't try to get up. The snow whipped around the deck manically.

"I don't know what is worse, Annie." He growled. "I don't know if it's worse that you knew and you never said anything or that you let me think he hated me! I wanted to help him but how could I!? I _failed_ him over and over again—"

"Percy, please, it's not— it's not like _that_ —"

"This whole fucking time, Annabeth! This whole time I thought he hated me because of Bianca. But that had— that was—" Percy sputtered, too upset for form words. They slipped through his grasp, slippery like the ice that felt like it was encasing his heart. Each exhale froze in the air as it heaved passed his lips.

"Percy—"

"You knew, Annabeth! You _knew_ and you saw him struggling. You saw him and you didn't help him! You didn't let _me_ help him! You saw him dying on the inside and you _let_ him!" Percy's voice shattered then and as he blinked he felt the touch of frost upon his cheek. His tears began to freeze the moment they trailed from his eyes. Percy gripped tight to the rail and fell forward, his forehead pressed to the frozen wood as he gasped trying to calm the hammering of his heart. Gasp after gasp of air didn't feel like they had enough oxygen for his lungs and he was drowning, choking on his own tears.

When he finally lifted his gaze it was as hard and unyielding as the sea when the caps freeze. "You knew that he loved me and you never said a thing."

She opened her mouth but she never had a chance to respond. The wind howled and the sea pitched beneath them sending her flying forward, knocking out his knees in the process and they slid across the deck a mess of limbs.


	20. Oceans and Shadows

_Where the Shadows Meet the Sea_  
Chapter 20  
 _Oceans and Shadows_  
Leo

* * *

Leo remembered.

Leo remembered and it wasn't that he was avoiding telling anyone, not exactly, but it also wasn't like anyone was asking him if he did. Mentioning it wouldn't exactly help anyone. It wasn't like with Jason whose memories returned and everyone else from his home knew him, knew who he was, although they hadn't known what had happened when he disappeared. With Leo it was different because there was Piper. Everyone else? They were mortals from the wilderness school and, well, they were never going to see them ever again anyway forget the fact that mortals were far more susceptible to the deception of the gods (or in this case, goddess). What Leo remembered effected Piper and— honestly it hurt his head to even think about. Once they opened the lid on that there really wouldn't be putting it back on again and for whatever reason her memories hadn't come back.

Maybe it was because she clung onto what she 'knew' and what she 'felt'. Leo could understand that. Not wanting to be the pawn of the gods didn't mean that they weren't no matter how unfair it was and the life that she had before it was overwritten with Jason and his blonde hair and blue eyes and Abercrombie smile was scary. Leo understood that. Like, what if it hadn't been as good? What if whoever was in it hadn't quite measured up? What if the fake memories and however complicated those feelings anchored to this person (one she hadn't truly known for any more than approximately ten minutes before the whole wilderness school thing went KABOOM and they were thrown headfirst into the world of demigods and monsters, a world that seemed to basically always need saving from their parents and enemies of their own making) were a better alternative?

Jason remembered. Piper didn't. Leo didn't resent that. It wasn't his place to open his mouth and fill in cracks the daughter of Aphrodite wasn't yet ready to fill.

For a moment earlier he had thought that she was starting to remember. Her eyes had been glassy, like she was glimpsing past their world toward something more. She was disoriented and confused and her bronze skin was just a little paler than normal, a little colder to touch despite the heat.

"Do you remember before?"

Leo shook his head.

"I was crying because my father wouldn't take my call and you offered me your hand. He needed to focus on his movie and his calls were forwarding to his assistant. Do you remember before?"

For a moment Piper looked at Leo like she saw him, really truly saw him. He had stood frozen unable to swallow and unable to answer. Was it lying to keep it from her? Or was it a simple omission meant to give her time? Or was it selfish because it was entirely possible that he was protecting himself. Leo could have maybe tried to help jog her memories but then that meant she might remember and when she remembered there was a very real chance that she would wish that she hadn't. Honestly, the fiction that Hera had concocted was more fitting, more like what Piper's real life should have been like versus what it had actually been and so maybe for a whole mix of reasons (wanting to be what she needed, not wanting to force it, respecting her mourning how she felt about Jason not being truly reciprocated after she'd made the choice to fight for it, the whole world ending, his being a big freaking coward, blah blah blah the list went on) he hadn't told her and when she had asked he had frozen. Unable to think, to move, to breathe.

Then, like always, duty called. She disappeared with Annabeth so Leo did the one thing that helped him to not think: work.

The son of Hephaestus wasn't entirely sure what he was building but like many of his inventions, it came to him through the intuitive movement of fingers and calling forth of objects from his tool belt plucking item after item. There was a faint breeze atop the Argos II and while he normally would have worked in the small cabin-turned-workshop that was formerly his bedroom the humidity was stifling and he needed fresh air. Movement caught his eyes and he glanced up catching sight of Hazel's golden locks disappearing over the side of the ship. Leo hadn't even heard her and while he wanted to call out to ask if she needed anything something, maybe intuition, told him not to make a noise. Leo set aside the pieces of his as-of-yet-unknown project and glanced over the side. The raven haired son of Poseidon was waiting for her below and when her feet touched down on the soil, they took off in the opposite direction of Annabeth and Piper. He watched as they retreated towards the horizon until they were little more than a speck and it dawned on him exactly what he was making as he returned to his project: some kind of external skeletal prosthetic for Percy.

Whatever had happened to his arm and shoulder, the muscle removed and damage done to his nerves made his left arm useless and with the greatest battle yet to come they couldn't afford to be a single person down no matter how much Leo wanted to shout at everyone to leave the guy alone. He needed a break— he deserved a break. His meltdown after the sea serpent episode where somehow he hadn't been struck by Zeus when he'd wished all the gods would just fuck themselves? If that sort of reckless regard for life wasn't a glaring sign that the guy needed to sit out the next one to two end-of-the-world-events? Leo wasn't sure what was but when the fate of the world fell on a handful of shoulders, even a traumatised semi incapacitated demigod, there really was no choice. And besides Jason, the guy was their best bet with a blade and with his abilities, especially the freakier ones that he seemed to be uncovering since his return from Tartarus.

Having Percy at less than one-hundred-percent capacity just wasn't possible.

Leo knew next to nothing about biology and cybernetics weren't even something he had never even dreamt about before but as he returned his attention to the mess of precious metal and wiring, he was positive that's what he was making. A way to give Percy Jackson movement again. Instinctively, he'd been crafting it to withstand electric shock (what with Sparky being on a short fuse recently and especially getting his hackles up where the Greek-turned-Praetor was concerned) and water damage. His grease stained fingers went back to work; this was the sort of challenge that was way more up his alley than matters of the heart.

He could almost push thoughts of Piper out of his head.

Whatever peace he might have found in building was punctuated by the sound of footsteps. Leo didn't need to look up to know that it was Frank with Jason close on his heels. The son of Jupiter had always had a commanding sort of cadence that he'd known anywhere while the son of Mars was heavier footed and far less certain (his father's blessing might have made him over a foot taller and jacked like a defensive lineman but it didn't mean he knew how to carry this new version of himself yet). Emotional intelligence might not have been his domain but he could practically feel the agitation radiating from the first and hesitance from the other… or maybe he could chalk it up to recent experience.

"Hi guys," he said without looking up from his project.

For a moment there was silence and if they were expecting anything more from him, the son of Hephaestus didn't offer it.

"Have you seen Hazel?" Frank finally piped up sounding more like the question coming from his lips was inspired by Jason.

"She's talking to Percy." If Leo was intentionally vague with the tense, well, that was intentional.

"They're not below." Jason stated. Leo hummed under his breath in acknowledgement as he swapped out a tool in his belt, letting it disappear as he dug around for another and pulled it free. The lack of response wasn't what the blonde was looking for as he snapped is fingers down in Leo's line of sight to grab his attention. "Have you seen them?"

Leo set down his project and glanced up at the two of them. Unsurprisingly Jason looked frustrated and Frank appeared worried— he was sure that the first inspired the second. Who knows what he's been whispering in Frank's ear. Not that the whole fight over breakfast inspired confidence in either of them but Jason had the advantage of being in his right mind while Percy was most definitely hanging on by a thread (a fact that everyone either ignored or refused to acknowledge).

"She's talking to Percy," he repeated.

"Where?" Frank asked, giving a look to the former praetor.

If this is some sort of brotherhood of the totally jacked and overly developed for our age, I'm going to call bullshit, Leo sighed to himself. Honestly, he was either going stir crazy from being cooped up with the same people night and day— which would have been difficult for anyone but especially for teenagers turned soldiers responsible for saving, oh, you know, the entirety of the human race— or he was just really sick of the prejudices that felt like they were forming within the friends group.

"Your guess is as good as mine. They left about half an hour ago." His response sounded short even to himself but Leo stood up, wiped the grease from his fingers on the rag that had been hung over his shoulder.

"And you didn't say anything?" Jason was incredulous.

"Why would I say anything?"

"C'mon dude, you know why."

"Why?"

Jason gave him a look.

There's only one side to be on, he wanted to shout and honestly he wasn't sure if kids of Hephaestus could have smoke coming out their ears but he was pretty sure he might be smouldering from sheer effort of not smacking the two of them over the head. One side. Team save-the-freaking-world. And if you're going to play the Percy isn't reliable card then maybe you shouldn't be pushing his buttons by hitting on his girlfriend all of the time. Maybe that wasn't entirely fair of him considering Annabeth clearly needed someone to be there for her and Jason was willing… but the looks that he gave her. He and Piper are broken up and it's not like I'm… but he shook off the thought and swallowed it down. That was like comparing apples and iguanas.

Leo waited and gave Jason the chance to respond in a rational way because they were friends.

"Percy's not exactly stable at the moment. He shouldn't be alone with—"

"I'm going to stop you right there," Leo cut him off with a raise of his hand. "Before you say something that makes you sound like a total asshole, Jason." His gaze moved to catch Frank's eyes. "Hazel deserves answers and Percy deserves to talk about what happened if he's ready."

"We can't afford—"

But Leo wasn't about to be steamrolled by the blonde superman, no matter his frustration. "You might have been raised as a child soldier, Jason, and Annabeth might have been to but this is not normal. We might be responsible for preventing the end of the world, but if we do, it's like you said: we're still going to have to live in it. Hazel and Percy are still going to live with themselves and everything that happened. Give him a fucking break, man."

Jason looked a little green and Frank hung his head sensible enough to feel shame at being talked into the other's skepticism.

"And we're supposed to be the good guys," he murmured as he gathered up his things. "You guys can take watch." His tone didn't leave any room to be challenged.

The fact that his back was aching and his neck popped four times when he sat up from hunching over the robotic skeletal prosthetic told Leo all he needed to know about how long he'd been cooped up on the floor in his room. All around him was a mess of parts and pieces, some hand crafted and others the product of fishing around in his tool belt. There was still a lot of work to be done but it was starting to look like what it was actually meant to be and although he had no idea whether or not it would actually function? Leo was feeling pretty proud of it.

He practically jumped out of his skin when he heard someone clear their throat behind him. Pushing himself up off the ground, he turned around to face the door and covered in soot and with a few more bruises and burns than she'd left with was Piper. His voice failed him, tongue glued to the bottom of his mouth.

"Hi," she offered, pushing one of her braids over her shoulder.

"Hi," he echoed before scrabbling for his rag to wipe his hands. It wasn't that he needed to clean them or anything but Leo needed something to do before the awkward chill crept up his back and sank his heart just a little lower in his chest. By his nature he was generally a happy-go-lucky try-to-look-on-the-bright-side kind of guy but humour was a great way to cover up insecurity and constantly moving was a great way to try to keep from drowning. Leo wasn't sure why but his cheeks were burning and he couldn't meet her eyes.

"We made it back," the other added from the doorway and Leo finally glanced up. "What's that?"

Leo sent a silent thanks to the gods that she stepped across the threshold and picked a subject that was anything other than whether or not he had penetrated the mist that had been their past without Jason. He held up the half complete contraption and made it wave at her. "Something for Percy… if I can get it right."

"For Percy? Like an arm?"

"Sort of? More like a high tech brace. Hopefully it'll give him a greater range of motion with the arm… between the muscles and the nerves that were damaged he can't do a lot. It threw him off balance with screaming-hog-tied-goddess-down-the-hall. " Leo set it back down and reached for his rag again, wringing it between his hands.

"Good thinking."

Silence hung between them and Leo normally would have cracked a joke, probably at his own expense, but her might as well have swallowed cement from the heavy feeling of his tongue in his mouth. Piper ran her fingers over some of the pieces that were laid out as if she were searching for something but she must not have found it because eventually she cleared her voice.

"I just wanted to let you know that we made it back okay."

If she expected something more from him, Leo wasn't sure what it could be. Her eyes were wide, maybe searching, but Leo wasn't sure if she was waiting for him to do or say something or if she were studying him trying to find something. Maybe pieces of memories, tendrils of mist to unfurl and brush away from the false memories bestowed to her Hera. Maybe not. Leo tried to swallow but he half choked on his own air. Fortunately, he didn't need to say anything because a blonde haired daughter of Athena appeared in his doorway far more sunburned and with half her eyebrows missing.

"Percy and Hazel left."

"Uh—" he paused because clearly Jason or Frank (but probably Jason) had filled her in so he wasn't really sure why she was asking. It felt like less of a question and more of a trap. Leo blinked, one shoulder rising and falling.

"Where did they go?"

"I didn't ask." Annabeth opened her mouth but Leo didn't give her a chance. "Like I told Jason," he began pointedly and didn't miss the way the blonde's eyes fell affirming his assumption, "those two deserved a little time and space to work through whatever it is they need to work through about Nico and what happened. It didn't seem like my place to—"

"But how are we supposed to know where they went? We need to keep going…" Leo could understand worried. Hell, he could even sort of understand this smothering thing and being too close and needing things to go back to normal. What he couldn't understand was the way the son of Jupiter and the daughter of Athena pushed like the only possible thing that mattered in the world was the quest. Sure, saving the world from end-times was important and all but at the end of the day they were still kids.

"Hazel deserves to know what happened to her brother and Percy deserves a chance to talk about what happened if he's ready."

"Leo, you don't—"

"Oh no," he interrupted. "I get it. Save the world. Stop dirt-mouth from waking blah blah blah. Listen, I don't know how you all did things last year when the world was ending but we are not soldiers."

Her lips curled downwards and her brow furrowed, fingers lifted to play with the beads on her camp necklace. "We are though." Piper gave her a sympathetic look but she stood there, watching the both of them, unspeaking. She didn't look like she wanted to pull her own hair out so in addition to the mission being successful, things must have smoothed between the two girls. Leo was happy for Piper.

"We aren't. You and Jason might have been raised at the camps and taught to fight with a sword and not get eaten by harpies and not think twice about what our godly parents expect of us, which is super unreasonable if you stop to think about it." Leo ran a hand through his hair before grabbing the towel from his shoulder and tugged it between his hands. Now would be a great time to start tinkering again, staying still was a struggle especially when he was agitated and he wasn't sure what it was but yeah, he was upset. "But the rest of us, Percy included, have spent the majority of our lives in the world of mortals."

"It's… but we have to keep going."

"I know and I'm not saying for a second that we shouldn't try to save the freaking world because duh, obviously." Leo agreed and the way her grey eyes softened he thought maybe, just maybe, he was getting through to her. "But we're kids playing at soldiers, Annabeth. If that's not bad enough we haven't even had a funeral for Nico… and like not a single person has stopped and said 'hmm, you know what, that's totally fucked up,' end of the world or not."

He might as well have spit in Annabeth's face the way the colour drained from it. Piper's normally brilliant gemstone eyes dropped. So it wasn't only Annabeth who had failed to consider it; Leo didn't hold it against either of them. This was the world they lived in now and while there were a number of things that didn't sit right with the son of Hephaestus, this was by far the worse. His voice lowered. "And it's not just messed up for Nico because everyone deserves to be remembered, especially because of how it happened. I know we don't know how but we know where and that's bad enough. And it's messed up for Hazel and for Percy… for all of us."

"Leo," Piper whispered. If she wanted him to stop, he couldn't.

"Someone died so we could keep fighting. Someone died for us. We can't undo that… he's dead and we all owe him."

Annabeth looked stricken. Piper didn't look much better.

"And no one's thought to thank him, let alone do anything to help him rest peacefully." Dropping the rag, he shook his head. Not that he'd pushed for it and that was on him. Honoring the dead was important. "I'm glad you both made it back okay," he added softly before fleeing his room.

Honestly, he wasn't really interested in knowing what either of them said about him after he left.

Leo knew the moment that the two were back.

Jason and Frank had been hanging around above deck keeping a fixed eye on the horizons. They'd climbed up to the crow's nest and something about the children of Rome occupying a space that Nico di Angelo had self exiled himself to whilst on board the ship made Leo's teeth set on edge. It didn't feel right (then again, most things didn't feel right recently and even his nearly unending fountain of humour felt like it was going through a bit of a dry spell).

But he understood why they'd chosen the highest vantage point to survey the horizon. Whatever direction the two might return from, they would spot them. Leo knew the moment they did because the air pressure dropped and his ears popped— which was pretty normal when Jason summoned the winds and went flying like an Abercrombie superman.

There was a breeze, entirely nothing to do with Jason's domain over the skies as a child of Jupiter. It was the kinds that promised a break from the humidity and a slightly less oppressive night. Leo was happy for it because honestly in the whole packing for a quest thing he wasn't sure he'd actually packed enough socks or underwear. There was something wrong about entertaining the idea of having to turn them inside out or backwards in the hopes of feigning they weren't nearly as dirty or sweat soaked as they were. Unfortunately when preparing for a quest it wasn't like anyone at camp had been like ah, you know what's a great idea in my opinion? A washer and dryer. It was looking more and more like most of his clothes would need to be torched because he wasn't sure there was any point in attempting to save them.

Percy appears over the side of the Argos II first, solemn faced and barely acknowledging his presence. Just because the other teen needed to talk about something didn't mean it was magically going to lift a weight from his shoulders. He'd disappeared below deck just as quickly and it wasn't long after that Jason, Hazel and Frank appeared so Leo made himself scarce. Fortunately, there was plenty to do and with everyone aboard and mostly in one piece they could head out before night fell. Leo flitted about the deck to make that happen.

They were well on their way and it wasn't like he was eaves dropping. He wasn't. If anything, Leo would have preferred to be the only one above deck. But the door from below slammed open and he heard something (someone) fall and with Annabeth's voice not far behind it didn't take a whole lot of brain power to realise that it must have been Percy. Leo set himself moving checking ropes and sails and power to the engine; everything was fine but he didn't want to hear whatever was going on between them. That didn't mean that he didn't, though, even if he tried to stand a little further away.

For a moment they leaned against the rail; he saw them out of his periphery and for the briefest of seconds he thought that maybe it would be okay. Maybe the start of whatever the fight was about wouldn't matter. Maybe the tide would calm and neither of them would get caught in the current.

Maybe.

But Leo didn't have a good feeling about it.

Leo turned away. He wasn't going to watch— they deserved some privacy so he went back to tinkering and come to think of it his father might be the god of metalworking and blacksmiths and yada yada ya but it really came down to tinkering. Then again, the title wasn't exactly awesome when compared to god-of-the-gods or god-of-the-ocean or god-of-the-underworld. Yeah. He could see why a list was probably a bit better than a shorthand. So he went back to tinkering with the GPS in the console and tried to tune out the conversation between the two.

But when Percy's voice rose, he couldn't miss it.

"Did you know!?" The wind picked up and although Leo always ran hot (even when he wasn't spontaneously bursting into flame) even he had a shiver up his spine.

It was dark, night had fallen, but the temperature dropped as quickly as if they'd walked through a cold spot in a haunted house (and Leo was pretty sure of the ones he'd felt in his life they were probably real given magic, winged horses, and pretty much every monster or myth was too). It was impossible to miss the way frost had begun to spider web its way across the railing and from the spot on the deck here Percy stood— he might not have been looking but when he found the tendrils near his own feet he'd looked up and, well, Leo had been quick to find the source.

And looking up means that he can't help but also notice the fact that the sea ahead, relatively quiet as they were, wouldn't be that way for long.

"Percy…" Leo called and if he interrupted the fight then neither of them looked like it so he tried again. "Percy… buddy… maybe we should all calm down for a second. Maybe take a breath or something before—"

The son of the sea was unmoving but so was Annabeth. The two might as well have been cut off from everyone because they didn't even glance in his direction and the ocean before the ship was rioting. The waters they were on might have been a little choppy but relatively navigable but in another minute or so if the older teen didn't calm down they were going to be in for one hell of a ride and Leo wasn't sure if he could get the ship in the air as fast as—

Over the wind, over is own inner panic, over everything he heard it and for a moment Leo was immobile.

"You knew, Annabeth! You knew and you saw him struggling. You saw him and you didn't help him! You didn't let me help him! You saw him dying on the inside and you let him! You knew that he loved me and you never said a thing."

By the time Leo glanced back up it was too late. A wall of water was fast approaching them and even if he'd wanted to launch the Argos II into the sky, the ocean hammered down onto the boat throwing the world upside down like gravity itself no longer existed.

Leo wasn't as strong as Jason or Frank or even Percy (well, when the dude wasn't a malnourished shadow of himself) but he'd managed to hang onto the helm for dear life despite being battered with water. The Argos II rolled one way nearly capsizing but just before it could come crashing down it was like the ocean must have come rushing back up pushing the ship to right itself. Coughing up sea water, he caught sight of Percy clinging to the edge of the ship himself with a look of concentration and if Leo thought that the older teen had been freaking out and caused the whole thing he didn't think so now because even as the ship attempted to right itself and he found his footing the weather didn't quiet. Percy might be son of Stormbringer but he was either having some sort of split personality episode and his powers weren't under his control or there was something else happening.

Wind howled nearly as loud as the crashing of the ocean, lightning streaked across the sky, venti smashed into one another sparking with fury and the ocean… Leo didn't have words to describe it.

"Something's—" but the wind stole Percy's voice. He motioned to the edge of the ship and mimicked a hand going over.

Annabeth, blonde hair sticking to her face, shook her head. Leo didn't get a chance to chime in before Percy disappeared over the edge of the ship, stygian blade in his hand. Small Bob howled miserably and it would figure that if anything could be heard over the cacophony of the ocean it was the demonic cat. Instead of being swept away the whole magical transformation thing must have worked in his favour because Leo suspected his razor sharp claws were probably embedded so far into the deck that Leo would have to replace the wood.

You need to still have a ship to worry about repairs, Valdez, he reminded himself.

At that second, it wasn't looking too likely that would be the case.

But seeing Small Bob did give him an idea. He reached inside the sodden tool belt and fastened himself to the helm. In retrospect he would realise this might have the desired effect of ensuring he didn't go careening overboard into his opposite-element and dying a slow painful death through drowning and being lost at sea or eaten by numerous sea creatures (or monsters) but instead would throw him around like a paddle ball and give him a pretty tremendous case of whiplash through his whole body.

When he looked back up, Annabeth had managed to cling to one of the mast. Another flash of blonde moved from the corner of his eye. Jason must have made his way up from below deck and whatever tension had existed between the two demigods earlier was gone. "What's happening!?" He roared over the wind, or maybe he was able to cause it to die down just a little, Leo wasn't sure.

Leo opened is mouth to answer but the world turned upside down and as the ship pitched he smashed into Jason who kept tumbling but being affixed to the helm meant he recoiled like a yoyo on a string and went flying the other way. His nose and mouth filled with salt water and without even thinking flames shot forth, some sort of gut instinct as if he could boil away the water but even his flames couldn't overcome an ocean's worth of water. The demigod half choked on air, his lungs burning when they were finally able to fill themselves again. There was the swoosh of water as his head tried to right itself and he was pretty sure his own bodily composition was about 60 percent sea water and 40 percent Leo at that point. From overhead a loud crack sounded but it could have been hell raining down from above which was as likely as it trying to murder them from below. And no sight of Percy.

Jason had disappeared from the deck and Leo had no idea if the boy had taken off into the atmosphere in an attempt to subdue the restless storm spirits crackling overhead and he was lost in the rain and wind and low-hanging clouds or if he'd been swept away. The thought made his stomach drop and he did a quick canvas of the deck, spotting Annabeth, teeth set on edge, clung like a yellow haired koala, her hands and knuckles white contrasting her sunburned skin. Piper and Hazel were dragging themselves out from below deck with a stern looking gorilla (clearly Frank) pushed them forward and held them steady. And Percy… well Percy could be fighting with the split-personality of his father, swallowed by another sea serpent or ocean dwelling creepy-crawly, or gobbled up by sludge mouth's mud on the ocean floor for all they knew.

Another crack sounded, and then another, a few snaps and then a long groan.

That's not good, and Leo glanced up just in time to see ropes snapping, the sail sagging, water logged and wind ripping at it while the mast was splintering. He could see it in slow motion, the way it swayed in the wind, ropes whipping madly as they dropped from the sky and he had to dodge so he wasn't knocked unconscious by thick rope or a metal pulley.

"FRANK! MOVE!" He screamed as loud as he could. The gorilla looked upwards and clung to the two girls, rolled across the deck and where they'd been a few seconds before was the decapitated upper quarter of the mast. It was a miracle that no one had been pegged by the rope or smothered by the shredded water-logged fabric.

The ship was still pitching back and forth but the waves were no longer fifteen feet tall. Leo hoped it was because Percy wasn't dead or maimed but kicking whoever's ass was responsible for the murderous weather.

"Are you all okay?" Although his sneakers slipped across the deck, he fell to his knees in front of the two girls and Frank.

"Other than being half drown, I'm fantastic." Piper sputtered.

Hazel on the other hand had a lump forming on her forehead.

"O-okay. Just a little woozy." Fortunately it wasn't bleeding and her eyes didn't look crossed so if she was concussed, it was hopefully a mild one.

"She fell when the ship pitched forward the first time. Hit her head against the wall." Piper offered and Leo nodded.

"What happened?" Frank asked, the transition from monkey-on-steroids to Frank-on-steroids (because Leo still had a hard time equating the Asian Adonis with the fluffy and sort of awkward Canadian he'd been before his father's blessing) sending his stomach rolling. It was cool, yes, but totally not something anyone wanted to watch up close.

"It was beautiful and then," he motioned to the chaotic seas around them. "I thought it was Percy— he and Annabeth were arguing. I tried to get us up in the air but it was too late." He should have been paying more attention.

"Where's Percy? And Jason?" Piper asked looking around. Annabeth had joined them and he wasn't sure where she had come from (maybe Leo was a little dizzy or concussed from being a human yo-yo) but if he had ever been hoped to see the steely resolve burning in her eyes it was at that moment. But she looked small, drawn into herself, and it was only then that Leo remembered the accusation Percy had hurled before the world had actually turned upside down.

"Percy went to see if he could stop whatever is causing this." Her voice was small and maybe it was emotional exhaustion but she looked more worried when she added that Jason had joined him. "He roped some storm spirits and I think he's using them like a shield."

Leo opened his mouth to crack a joke and try to make light of something but he couldn't find anything from his infinite resources of hilarity.

"We need to get the ship in the air. Whatever's happening… we can't help them."

If Leo had ever felt like he could kiss a guy before it was Frank Zhang right then for being the voice of reason amongst a sodden, shivering, and listless bunch of demigods. Without a word the group of teens set to work with Leo back at the helm with hands flying as he tried to kickstart the engines to life while the others went about dealing with the torn sail or the broken mast and wily ropes before any of them wound up knocked out or worse. The wind shrieked and honestly the son of Hephaestus wasn't sure if they'd be able to get the Argos II into the air… and if they did there was still the matter of the storm spirits.

One thing at a time, he reminded himself as he pulled levers and tried to get the aerial engines ignited but they sputtered and he knew that there must be water in the engine room below deck. How could there not be? Just as Leo turned to shout to Annabeth— the closest to him— the surface of the water erupted as Jason went flying through the air— and not the normal sort of flying but the action-packed-superhero-punch kind of flying completed with extended oceanic arm. It fell away, water returning to its source and Jason, managed to stop himself tumbling end over end in mid air as he got his wits back about him. Other than being drenched and missing the signature glasses (Leo had a feeling they were at the bottom of the ocean and they weren't coming back), he looked okay… until another massive fist made of water came shooting out from the ocean chasing after him.

It was only a second, maybe half a second, but Leo's mind was on overdrive, demigod senses checking everything around him and taking inventory. Jason was okay. Piper and Annabeth were nearby and his hands had never stopped moving over the console attempting to confirm his suspicions and according the diagnostics there was indeed water in the engine room. Leo let out a colourful string of expletives under his breath. Until whatever ocean deity was throwing a tantrum— and Leo super hoped it wasn't his friend's dad— could be sweet talked by Percy or got bored of attempting to murder a handful of demigods, they were stuck.

"Leo!" Piper's voice was carried over the roar of the storm.

With nothing left to attempt, Leo unhooked himself from the helm and slipped over.

"What shall we do with the ropes?"

"Tie them up. We can worry about them later."

She nodded. Despite the braids in her hair, strands had sprung free and her bangs were matted to her forehead. The mascara and eyeliner she wore darkened just beneath her eyes but she made no attempt to wipe it away; the look in them was unwavering. Whatever crisis of confidence she had earlier was then replaced by the need to act, her jaw was set and kaleidoscope eyes radiated a ferocity and determination that her half-siblings lacked. That was the Piper that he knew, the one who wasn't afraid to be vulnerable, but also wasn't afraid of her own strength. When she looked up and met his eyes, her brows furrowed in question. Leo went back to securing ropes and cutting those unsalvageable ones away.

Yeah, great. Get caught being a total freaking creep. That's going to make her totally cool with remembering— but he didn't have a chance to finish that thought.

"Leo! Behind you!"

A tingle ran up the back of his spine even before she shouted, that unmistakable sixth sense kicked into action. His body flooded with adrenaline and every inch buzzed with energy as he dropped to his knees into a roll and popped up facing where he had been just moments before. The deck was charred, wisps of smoke curled up and if it weren't for the fact that he doubted even Zeus— Jupiter, he corrected— would try to blow up the demigods that were trying to keep Olympus from falling (because he was entirely convinced that the dude wouldn't murder his own son or just a boat load of demigods for the hell of it in general), he might have thought lightning had struck the spot he'd last stood.

The deck was smoking and Leo could feel his heart beating in every inch of his body. A chicken-snake creature the size of his forearm had its fangs bared and hissed, poison dripping from its mouth onto the deck. Its body coiled despite the wings, the white crown around its head shook like one of those dinosaurs on Jurassic Park and Leo could see it, what could happen next, in his minds eye. If he moved this way then Piper would be exposed and the serpentine-rooster-thing would have a clear shot at her. If he moved that way then he'd put himself between the two and decrease the likelihood that she'd be hurt. If they both moved then it was a fifty-fifty shot which of the two it would go after. He could picture it all in his minds eye, all at the same time, every possible scenario playing out at once.

Everything happened in the beat of a heart. Leo shifted slightly, putting himself between Piper and the monster. The thing opened its mouth wide, unhinged, but Leo brought up his hands and unleashed a torrent of flames. The boat rocked at the same time, water from the ocean spraying over the side and he dropped his hands, concentration broken as his hip bumped into Piper and he stumbled to keep them both upright. She laughed. They looked up. There was no pile of ash, bones, fangs, or even a trophy.

The flying snake-chicken hybrid sputtered and coughed, eyes wide and not-in-the-least chargrilled but very definitely annoyed.

"Uhm… Leo?"

"I'm working on it," he muttered as he brought his hands up again, clapped them together, and felt the familiar heat burning in his centre rise up towards the surface. Before the flames were any longer than his own fingers, a second serpent joined the first. Its wings dripping and itshook itself off mid-flight. Very dog like. Its white collar looked more like a spiked dog collar sold in Hot Topic waiting for some edgy kid with black nails and a blacker heart to come and buy. The first snake hissed at the second, the second gnashed its jaws, spikes expanding into an iridescent collar, and turned towards the two demigods.

Before he could express how not good it looked, the second serpent coughed fire leaving Leo stood there untouched but also blinking in confusion. Piper clung to him, hiding behind his figure and when she stood up part of her hair was definitely smoking. She was going to need a haircut. For a moment the serpents and Leo stood blinking at one another. Clearly they had never encountered a demigod they couldn't BBQ before and Leo was thinking the list of monsters he wasn't able to torch was pretty small, too.

"Well, I guess we're just going to have to call it a stalemate." Piper's voice was saccharine and radiated power.

Leo himself was about ready to shrug and put his hands down and throw in the towel. Almost. The white-collared-snakes opened their mouths, poison dripping from their fangs, and let out a noise that sent a shudder down his spine.

They both struck at the same time. Leo reached into his tool belt and pulled out a massive mallet and a fraction of a second before the thing would have closed its larger-than-life mouth around his arm, it came face to face with metal. The thing went flying but unfortunately so did the mallet— if Leo might have wondered about taking up baseball it was pretty much quashed by the fact his follow through meant his weapon was flying along with the monster. And as they went flying, the boat heaved. Leo slid and lightning streaked across the sky. Above him he saw Jason, a swarm of the fire-breathing snakes flying after him. With each strike of lightning another one went down, falling from the sky. But the son of Jupiter was a whirlwind, actually a whirlwind, as he shot through the storm clouds trying to keep away from their teeth and tongues of flame.

When he hit the railing, Leo gripped on tightly with one hand and used the other to reach for Piper. She was tumbling towards him, hair plastered to her paler-than-usual face. Leo managed to catch her but air rushed from his lungs in a sharp burst as her elbow landed in his gut but before she could apologise or he could crack a joke through gritted teeth, water ripped them from the deck. Leo wasn't a strong swimmer— the water had always made him uncomfortable. And his lungs were already empty so a tightness grew in his chest almost immediately. The water was chaotic, it was hard to tell which way was up but his arm was still around Piper and at least they were together. They both clawed and kicked their feet, trying to find their way back toward the surface but Leo wasn't sure if they were swimming up any more than they might have been swimming down and just as his lungs were burning, the feeling of claustrophobia pressing around him like the ocean from all sides, he felt a hand around his bicep.

Leo's lungs sputtered, greedily choking on air as they broke the surface. Jason smiled down at him and Piper, the wind roaring around him as the ocean receded below. He would have uttered a thank you if he wasn't busy gasping for air but Piper beat him to it.

"I saw you go under and I wasn't about to let anything happen to you. I'm going to set you back down. I need to help Percy."

Before they could ask what it was he needed help with— presumably the thing that was wreaking havoc on the ocean— he heard a thunderous roar of frustration. Of course there would be a thirty plus foot giant with chicken-snakes-for-hair and tree-trunk-dragon-legs riding a wave with a massive trident in one hand and a fishing net slung over his shoulder. Just your average Tuesday. Percy crashed around him like the ocean itself, black blade sucking any hope of light from each place it landed like he was doing some sort of violent water ballet. He moved in ways that Leo had never seen before with an expression as destructive as an earthquake, but the giant shook his head and basilisks fell from his hair. Percy called water to block their fire, dodged their teeth and danced like he could walk on water (well, because he could).

"Be careful," Jason said as he set the two down before shooting off once more.

Piper watched as he went and Leo pretended not to notice.

"Are you two okay?" Annabeth and Hazel rushed to meet them. They were soaked to the bone, Annabeth with her pony tail through a cap and a welt on her arm presumably from the fire breathing snakes. Hazel on the other hand looked relatively unscathed with her golden curls in a knot at the top of her head. She must have made some quick work of conjuring some string or extra strength elastics. A squeaking sound came from her shoulder and Leo was about to ask a question about why there was a weasel perching on the girl's shoulder (clearly it was Frank but wouldn't something like a shark or godzilla be way more useful?) when a thunderous laugh caught his attention.

"Tiring, are we, son of Poseidon?"

Even from the distance he could see Percy breathing hard, the knuckles gripping his sword were white. But this wasn't an after effect of Tartarus. They'd seen him in the Necromanteon. He'd seen him in Nike's gladiatorial contest. This was something entirely different because even in his exhaustion he seemed to radiate power.

"Hardly," the boy scoffed back. "Think I've still got a little Tartarus in my lungs. You know, since I'm one of the only demigods to ever make it back."

"We have to help him."

"We do… but we also have to keep the ship from sinking. I don't think Jason or Percy can carry us all the way to where we need to go." Leo wasn't trying to shirk responsibility but they really needed to get water out of the engine room.

"He can't defeat Polybotes on his own. We need the help of a god or a goddess."

"Oh you absolutely do. I'm afraid little-brother over there isn't going to last much longer." Their heads whipped around at the voice. It was high and watery, echoing despite not being below water. She was beautiful in an otherworldly sort of way and Leo suppose that other world was the depths of the ocean itself. Her hair flowed as if on a current, ocean tangled waves as pale as gossamer wings with highlights of faded aqua and teal. Her dress was a pale green, cinched at the waist with abalone and a crown of sea shells and the most stunning sea glass topped her dainty head. Her eyes were as pale as her skin, like watery moonlight, and her smile was as cold as the depths of the ocean. She pulled herself over the edge of the boat and where her dress touched, the ocean followed.

"So I take it you're the one responsible for all of this," Leo deadpanned with a wave of an arm indicating nearly drowning everyone and wreaking havoc on the Argos II. Not that he had any idea who she could be; the extent of his knowledge of Percy's divine family tree was Tyson and Poseidon… and did they have to be related to have dominion over certain things? Leo wasn't totally clear on that.

When the goddess grinned, her thin lips parted to reveal rows of perfectly pointed teeth. Her eyes glinted with a cruel sort of delight as she took stock of the chaos around them. As she surveyed her work, long fingers adored with rings made of pearl and exotic shells danced in the air as if ebbing the storm on. "Mostly." She settled upon, mischief in her voice. "I simple wanted to draw out my brother, maybe maim one or two of you before my associate," she waved an elegant hand towards the giant, "murdered the little brat. Father is always going on about his precious bastard son. I hadn't anticipated the little hero would be so chaotic, not anything like father had described!"

Each step she came closer, the ocean crept up higher on the deck, as if unwilling to let her go.

"You're Percy's sister." Hazel whispered.

"Percy's sister!?" She sneered, turning from one demigod to another. Frank had transformed back into a demigod instead of a half-drowned-rat-thing but looked equally clueless. "I am Kymopoleia!" She was less impressed when they all continued to blink. "Goddess of violent sea storms, bringer of treacherous waves, responsible for the deaths of countless sea-men."

Leo snorted, her cold eyes fixed on him.

"What?" He said holding his hands out. "Sea men? Really? No one else is going to bite?"

The goddess blinked. "I do not understand."

"Honestly, it's really better that you don't." Annabeth reassured half looking like she wanted to throw herself over the side of the ship. Then there was Hazel who looked, like with many modern phrases, mystified but attempted to appear that she wasn't entirely lost.

"It sounds sexual," Leo blurted. "Like you're killing loads of… well…"

The son of Hephaestus made a noncommittal gesture with his hand and then immediately dropped it when he realized that his attempting to not totally offend a goddess who could quite clearly murder them all in the midst of her element might have looked a little suggestive. Her pale eyes went wide and a hand lifted to her lips to cover her mouth, but not before they caught glimpse of her needle point teeth. Her laughter peeled through the air like a dolphin, and she clapped her hands together in amusement.

"Oh, I am no siren, children!" And Leo could have sworn that the alabaster of her cheeks, chilling as her skin was, flushed the faintest pink. She leaned just a little closer, her voice hushed as if to tell them a secret. "But I have killed my fair share of sailors in such a way, too!" The glee that was evident in her voice was pretty disturbing. She flashed them a wicked grin, lightning in the sky twinkling in her large eyes.

"Great… good talk… that makes us feel so much better." Frank piped up, a shade of green that was either sick from the thought of it or because the whole violent rocking of the boat had him attempting not to yak up his guts.

"I look forward to watching you all perishing in agony. I do hope that you live long enough to watch your friend die before we kill you."

"Well, I mean, if you laid off on the whole violent storm hundred foot waves thing, you could probably guarantee that."

The corner of Kym's lips turned upwards and her gaze, cold as the depths of unexplored ocean floor fixed on them. "Oh sweet children… this isn't me anymore." For a moment the sentence hung in the air; Leo shuddered at the implication. "Now if you'll excuse me, I wish for a better view to watch the little bastard's death. I'll relish being able to recount to daddy dearest in excruciating detail how his favourite died." She dived over the edge, pale elegance performing a perfect swan dive as she disappeared beneath waves that appeared to reach up towards her.

Leo arched a brow at the other demigods but even Annabeth shrugged. "Any guess why she's team Gaea?"

"I have no idea." She muttered.

"Nico would have known," Hazel murmured and none of them disagreed.

"He looks exhausted," Frank muttered and from where they were stood they could see Percy was slowing down. He looked like he was struggling to keep his head up.

"What's wrong with him?" Piper's eyes were wide.

"Help him!" Annabeth grabbed Hazel's arm and tugged on it, pleading.

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?"

"I mean I can't. I pushed it too hard today and I don't… I haven't had time to recharge."

If Annabeth or Frank was about to ask exactly what had drained her, they didn't get a chance. Percy was caught by Polybotes trident and he went flying through the air while the giant roared with laughter. The son of Poseidon hit the mast with a crack that ran through the whole of Leo's body and set his teeth on edge. The force of the blow knocks him unconscious. The black blade falls from his grasp and skittered across the floor until it landed at Leo's feet. From the way Percy's head had rolled to the side, he wasn't far behind, and crumpled on the deck. The boat didn't entirely still, but the water calmed noticeably. Leo swallowed the sick feeling rising in the back of his throat… either Percy's half sister was trying to psyche them out or the demigod hadn't realised he was as much responsible for the near tsunami proportioned waves that had nearly killed his friends.

The other demigods rushed to their fallen friend's side and Leo made to retrieve the blade for him. When his fingers wrapped around the hilt it was like sticking his hand into a vat of liquid nitrogen. It burned his fingers with icy fire and even as he released it, it was as if the blade was not yet ready to release him in turn and for a second the world turned and he thought he might pass out. A shudder ran down his spine and the hairs stood on the back of his neck. Leo hadn't felt cold like that since manifesting fire but his teeth chattered in his head and it had nothing to do with the howling wind or the fact his clothes were dripping.

The son of Hephaestus used the tip of his shoe to slide the sword closer to Percy before crouching down with the others.

"He's burning up!" Annabeth practically shouted. Her hands were taking stock of his body, checking for fractures and for damage. She muttered under her breath but the only thing he could make sense of was, "but that's not possible!" She might not have been a child of Apollo or a satyr or even Calypso but Leo was confident that first aid was on the long list of things the daughter of Athena was competent in. She looked up at them all her brows furrowed. "His skin's on fire but he's… there's nothing wrong. That should have— there should be something—"

Hazel cleared her throat. "Not necessarily."

Grey eyes were blazing as they locked on the other demigoddess.

"What do you mean not necessarily?"

A sound like a chainsaw choking as it tried to come to life had them all jumping out of their skin. Apparently Percy Jackson was passed out cold and snoring.

"What do you mean not necessarily, Hazel!?" The question was more urgent, her voice raising.

"Percy jumped in the River Styx!" She confessed but clearly that one line didn't even begin to answer the questions of what in the name of Hades Helm she meant or why they'd been traipsing about the Underworld in the first place or when in the name of all that was holy they'd had time! But those were questions for when a giant and a goddess weren't trying to murder them all. The sky cracked open with lightning and thunder boomed deafening overhead. While Percy was passed out Jason was striking at the Bane of Poseidon, lightning igniting his sword as he flew through the air and sliced through his arm. The son of Jupiter was fast but when the giant tipped his triton towards the ocean it turned black and Leo's stomach sank.

"Poison." Frank whispered. "We have to help him!"

Knowing that her boyfriend bore the curse of Achilles, Annabeth was less gentle as she hit his chest. "Wake up!" Piper's voice was laced with the syrupy sound of her mother-given talent. Percy sucked in a breath, his body rose off of the deck as if someone had affixed a string in the middle of his chest and tugged him like a puppet. The air that rushed into his lungs sounded like the wind through trees, a whistling sort of thing that went on so long Leo thought for sure his lungs would burst. When his eyes opened they practically bulged out of his head with pupils blown so wide they left no room for irises the colour of the sea. He gulped in breath after breath as if he wasn't quite sure how to use his lungs and he scrambled backwards away from them, across the deck. From the way Percy was tossing his head back and forth he was either unseeing his surroundings, had hit his head so hard he didn't recognise where he was, or he was having some PTSD flashback. Leo really hoped it wasn't the latter— they'd nearly all died last time.

"Percy," Annabeth whispered but he didn't respond.

"Hey big guy, you okay?" Leo tried and pushed the sword a little closer. The sight of the stygian metal seemed to shake something lose (he was probably concussed— again— like honestly, they were going to need to see someone about permanent brain damage after all of this with the frequency of head trauma). His good arm shot out, took hold of the blade and stared at it for a moment.

"Not going to lie, dude. That hurt to watch. You should maybe think about hiring a stunt double next time."

"I'm fine," he whispered but his voice didn't sound entirely his own, it creaked like the gate to a graveyard and it wasn't exactly too high or too low but the words sounded foreign from his lips. Percy tilted his head, rolled his shoulder, rotated his wrist as if taking stock of his body before he jumped to his feet. Dark eyes spotted Jason as the poisoned waters Polybotes used to chase after the blonde Superman. Polybotes had shook his head, more serpentine dandruff shaking loose and within moments the son of Jupiter would be overwhelmed if no one helped him. He scoffed, probably the most Percy thing he'd done in the last few minutes, and without another word jumped over the side of the ship, blade in his hand.

The water reached up to meet him, dark and churning.

Hands broke through the surface and Hazel screamed, falling backwards. Piper and Frank both turned to help pull her back up to her feet. It was disturbing, seeing the way those who had died at sea rose as if on the tide. It made Leo's blood run cold but it wasn't the only disturbing thing they saw (because honestly, there wasn't a lot they could do to help Percy and Jason— the Canons fitted to the Argos II were mostly destroyed by the ten-story-tall waves). The dead grappled with Polybotes, held fast to his reptilian-like legs, some climbing up, tearing at his flesh with finger bones or partially decomposed hands… Leo was pretty sure he even saw a few half rotted sharks swimming in the waters.

The sea of poison did nothing to deter the dead.

When Polybotes sent a wall of poison rushing towards Percy, the demigod threw out his arm and with a roar that sent Leo's stomach spiralling, the sky was filled with a puff of purple. Water, the colour of the ocean once more, fell to join the rest of the sea. The howling winds sucked up the poison toward the venti and the giant was left staring slack jawed at the display.

A chill ran up Leo's neck. Lightning tore the sky in two and thunder bellowed. The basilisks fell, fried by the current or were grappling with the water churning with the deceased. Their poisonous fangs were useless against reanimated corpses. Lightning grew in intensity and the son of Hephaestus glance around at his friends staring on in a mix of shock and awe. The sky darkened and as Percy attacked the giant, black blade sucking any vestiges of light towards its centre, he wasn't entirely sure he was staring at Percy any more.

It didn't feel like him any more.

And Leo could swear all around him the shadows we're dancing.

* * *

 **AN:** OH MY GOSH. Okay, so first of all I want to say seven hundred apologies for making you all wait so long. I'm hoping that the behemoth that this chapter turned into will more than make up for it. If it doesn't, please forgive me. Between my hard drive dying and eating this chapter repeatedly, the anniversary of my grandfather's death, some mild depression, and my wife being admitted to the hospital because of health there have been a lot of curveballs over the last few months. So while I've been writing it had been a slow and interrupted process. Also like twenty thousand more apologies because I haven't edited this at all. I basically finished it and just wanted to throw it out into the void because I couldn't look at it any more hahaha.

As for what happened well! I think there are so many things to think about. First, of course with Leo. I think many of you suspected where this was going when it came to him. I don't feel there was a satisfactory explanation of exactly what happened pre-Jason for either of them and this is the beginning of attempting to clarify that within this story. How many of you are surprised? Probably not many. And Poor Piper and Leo... they're both dealing with things in their own way. Yeah. I think we can probably appreciate Leo's self consciousness and awkwardness of not wanting to force the situation.

As for the encounter with Polybotes... well there's more to come from this. But I'm interested to hear your conspiracy theories around what is happening. Mwahahah!

Also a massive thanks to Bobinthecomments and Awanderingmuse for being incredible, for being sounding boards, and for letting me spitball ideas at them in between what has been an arduous process to bring this chapter to life.


	21. Oceans and Darkness

_Where the Shadows Meet the Sea_

Chapter 21

 _Oceans and Darkness_

Hazel

* * *

Hazel's heart hammered in her throat as the son of Poseidon flew across the sky. Even before he hit the fractured wood of the broken mast she was pretty sure that he was unconscious from the way he didn't call to the water to cushion his fall or avoid it altogether. Rationally, she knew that the older demigod bore the curse of Achilles but she also didn't truly _understand_ it. There was no Roman equivalent. Magical talismans and good luck charms and curses from the gods crossed over from Greek to Roman with some substitutions, omissions and modifications but as the boy crashed into the mast and his crumpled body fell towards the deck, Hazel shrieked and raised her hands. She tried to call the mist, tried to pull it towards her and weave it into a net that might catch his prone form but the effort alone made her dizzy and sidestep.

And nothing appeared to help her friend.

She was beside him, on her knees, reaching out to check him before Annabeth swooped in beside her and jostled for position to run her hands across her boyfriend's body checking him for wounds. Hazel didn't budge but she also didn't interfere. While the daughter of Athena was probing as gently as she could at the back of his skull (something about not wanting to move him in case he'd broken his neck or his back and paralysing him), a chill ran up her spine. When she exhaled she fully expected to see her breath puff out in front of her but there was nothing, just a chill she couldn't quite shake.

She couldn't feel the life essence of those around her, or feel it begin to flutter and fade and ebb away when it was time. Hazel brushed soaked cinnamon strands from her eyes and reached out to take Percy's hand in her own. She wasn't like Nico. But something called out to her and she held his hand in her own, skin burning like Leo's fire kissed with the cool metal of Nico's ring encircling one of his fingers. Hazel shivered again; it felt like ice caps swimming amidst a lake of fire but she didn't let go. She clutched his hand between both of her own.

Annabeth continued her ministrations and by the moment she could feel her levels of anxiety and frustration growing. Finally, she pulled her curious gaze away from Percy and looked around at her friends, all but Jason gathered around the boy. The son of Poseidon looked younger with everyone crowded around him, long dark eyelashes fanned across cheeks that were far more pale and gaunt than they had been. He looked so much smaller, like without his personality compensating to take up extra space it was easier to see how much he'd faded away, even if it had been strained since he'd been back. Tartarus had sucked the life from him and sprawled on the ground with his girlfriend worrying over him and all eyes looking on, he looked more like her brother when they'd saved him from the jar than the amnesiac demigod who had shaken New Rome.

Percy wasn't like Jason or even Frank. He was broad in the shoulders but he was built like a swimmer, long limbed, lean, and muscular but without the added bulk that her boyfriend or the son of Jupiter exhibited. Now he was pale and gaunt, muscle still very much apparent but that healthy sun kissed glow was gone and his bones jutted a little too seriously from his skin leaving sharp angles that weren't exactly frail but they didn't speak of the same stamina he'd had before. The curse of Achilles would help, though, she was sure of it.

 _Percy_ had seemed sure of it.

"His skin's on fire but he's… there's nothing wrong. That should have— there should be _something_ —" Her fingers kept prodding trying to find some source of injury. Something to explain why he was burning up and unconscious and didn't appear to be bleeding from anywhere on his body when it was pretty obvious he should be broken regenerative powers of the sea be damned.

 _So Percy hasn't told her._

Normally it wouldn't feel like her place but given everything going on at the moment someone had to fill in the blanks. If Percy had wanted to break the news himself about their misadventure earlier to Annabeth in his own way, the daughter of Pluto would have to apologise later.

"Not necessarily."

And then it all came spilling out. Well, not all of it. But the part where he'd jumped in the Styx and Annabeth stared at her, mouth agape, grey eyes— what? Hurt? Surprised? Humiliated? Guilty? There were too many things that came and went far too quickly for Hazel to try to pin a name to it and if they were being honest, they might have fought side by side on this quest but she didn't really _know_ Annabeth.

 _Just like you didn't really know your own brother._

The thought froze her insides and she shook her head, cinnamon and gold curls slipping back in front of her eyes. It wasn't true. It wasn't true at all. They were _getting_ to know one another. Eventually he would have told her… maybe not about Percy but about himself. But her thoughts were interrupted with Piper's charmspeak as it willed whoever was listening to wake up and she might not have been asleep but it was like she woke from the darkness of her thoughts. A chill ran up her spine and goosebumps whispered across her skin and for the second time that day she found herself looking around desperately for someone who couldn't possibly be there.

Percy rose up like one of the dead her brother called from their restless sleep, the air whistling in his lungs not unlike when he'd finally risen from the River Styx and found air once more. Once they were filled with air they didn't stop and his breathing was too deep and too fast but Piper's charmspeak had pulled him prematurely from being asleep or passed out or pre-comatose. It was disorientating when it _wasn't_ aimed directly at you and with the stress of everything that Percy had been through she wasn't surprised that he skittered across the ship like he wasn't sure what he was seeing or who was around him or like his body wasn't entirely under his own control. Part of her is frightened, like the first time, when he'd come back from Tartarus ( _without Nico instead of Nico because of Nic_ o) and his screaming had pierced their ears before he had fought them the fog of Tartarus still in his eyes.

But his eyes, large and dark, softened as he looked around. He _saw_ them. Hazel heaved a sigh of relief but she couldn't shake the chill lingering at the back of her neck.

Annabeth's stormy eyes were on her but if she wanted to say anything to Hazel the opportunity is lost with Percy throwing himself over the rail as he charged off back to the fight. Annabeth's gaze follows and honestly so does everyone else's. The boat began to rock again and Hazel grabbed for the ledge, her stomach making its presence known in the back of her throat while she silently willed herself not to throw up. Leaning over the railing meant that if she did then at least she won't have to worry about falling in sick later or getting it on her shoes.

Hazel has never seen the water reach for the son of Poseidon before, not in the way that the shadows always reach— _reached_ — for her brother.

 _Like they were conscious. Like they wanted to wrap their tendrils around him and welcome him to a home you'll never understand._ And it was like that. The water is turbulent but it leaped up not quite snatching at his heels but like it anticipate each step before his shoe landed and it met him there. _Like you call to the mist and the mist calls to you,_ she thought. But Percy was the eye of the hurricane. With a seemingly impossible deadline looming, with a giant and a goddess trying to murder them, with a war looming it shouldn't have been possible that a sense of calm settled over Hazel. Calm like in her dreams when she sat on the end of her bed in the _Argos II_ and Nico sat beside her. For a split second when she closed her eyes she knew that when they opened again everything would be a bad dream. Nico would be there and things would be okay.

 _Open them,_ the daughter of Pluto willed herself. _Open them._

When golden eyes opened she wasn't in her room, she wasn't sat on the end of her bed, and the silent shadow of her half-brother was not sat beside her. The ocean frothed, rabid in its churning and the near black of the water reminded her of the dark from which her brother sometimes appeared. One second there was blackness. The next, Nico was there, slipping through it like a curtain she couldn't quite figure out. Hazel held her breath and then the water erupted, a hand piercing the waves and something inside of her broke.

Hazel didn't realise she was screaming or that her knees had buckled until the ocean and the dead fell from view and a combination of Frank's strong hands and Piper's gentler ones were helping her to her feet. Later, when she tried to explain to herself _why_ she wondered if maybe she had conjured him, her dead brother, and if the pale hand that first slipped through the waves was Nico. It didn't make any sense. She'd never shown any real affinity for that side of her godly heritage but then she had, on occasion, felt like slipping away from others. Whether that was a very human thing in someone's final moments or a specific demigod ability, she wasn't sure, but then she had no way of knowing how those sorts of things felt to anyone else.

Blood rushed through her veins and her vision wasn't tunnelled, but it wasn't entirely stable either. Bile burned at the back of her throat and the water churned with the dead. The sea seethed and lightning cracked overhead setting the world alight and chased away the darkness for just a moment leaving in its place a deeper darkness still. Hazel swallowed, knuckles white as she gripped the railing; she couldn't shake the chill that had settled down her spine or calm the goosebumps that prickled across her flesh.

She watched her friends because she was frozen in place, afraid to breathe too deeply. She watched Jason split the sky with lightning and the swarms of basilisks that had been chasing after him fall from the sky like some giant bug zapper. She watched as Percy attacked the thirty foot tall giant, black blade in place where the gold of Riptide should be, and wrenched the tainted ocean free of Polybotes command and a powdered cloud of toxicity blew away on the wind. She watched her friends not because there was nothing she could do (although being stood with the others doing the very same thing, it would be easy to mistake it for the same) but because she was frozen. Unable to fully breathe. Unable to fully move. Unable to shake the chill that settled at the back of her neck like the ghosting of a breath where none was present. The world was fuzzy and Nico was dead and she didn't understand how the ocean was filled with dead wrestling basilisks who had snaked through the water and missed being incinerated by lightning.

The thing about the dead was that they might be immune to poison, they might not wither at the basilisks chilling glare, they might not drown if submerged under water for too long, but they were dead and decomposing (some more so than others). Reanimated or not, that didn't diminish the fact that some of their skulls popped or arms broke off or if the water didn't wash away the poison quickly enough it began to eat through already putrefying tissue. As waterlogged as they were rising from the depths they probably would have had little chance of being scorched by fire, or at least none of the basilisks were attempting to torch the water churning with the dead.

And for some reason, none of that really registered with Hazel. As she was watching the water filled with bodies, the hilt of the spatha gripped tight in her hand, she searched. _Where are you?_ The question passed through her head before she knew who it was meant for just that it was meant for _something_.

Two things happen at the exact same time. One, she was pretty sure that Jason in a last effort to stop the giant harnessed the raging storm spirits. Her cinnamon hair was still soaking but slipped into her eyes and what started as breeze turned into a wind tunnel, tugged at their sopping clothes and stole the breath from their lungs. Two, Percy must have realised what Jason was doing and pumped water upwards. Some of the dead and some of the various sea life went along with it, caught first in the surge of water then tugged by the howling winds.

Polybotes must have realised what they were trying to do, forming a tropical storm or a hurricane that would have enough power between the two children of Big Three that they might not have needed a god or goddess on their side. Not if they could sweep the giant away and send the storm far out to sea. Hazel thought maybe she recognised the look of awe in his eyes even from that distance and in a last ditch effort, he pulled back his arm and threw his titan with all his might toward the son of Poseidon's head. The part of her brain hyper developed to see danger and forecast patterns and possible outcomes could envision what would happen next even before it did; the trident would connect with Percy's neck hard enough to break it if he didn't have the curse of Achilles and it was very possible that one of the prongs would connect with his eye. The basilisks venom filled teeth and volcanic breath might not have punctured Percy's skin but Hazel wasn't too sure where the curse of Achilles stood on things like eyes but she had a bad feeling it didn't end well.

Percy's reactions, as fluid as the element he controlled, wouldn't be fast enough. Not with the strength the giant had launched the trident and Hazel gasped, her hands came to cover her mouth but a second before the trident connected with the son of the sea, he fell away in a shower of foam and water. Hazel would have choked but over the railing a basilisk flew, the decaying arm of one of the numerous dead clenched between its fangs. At the sight of the demigods it dropped the appendage and the daughter of Pluto wasn't sure who screamed first but it launched itself towards Leo. Hazel reached for her spatha, the longest of the weapons, but she knew that even with her hair-trigger reflexes she would be too slow. The monster would connect with the impish teen's arm and it wasn't as if the heavenly metal did anything to vanquish the impenetrable beasts.

 _This isn't happening._ _This isn't happening. It's a nightmare._

The chill gripped harder at the back of her neck.

The sky split with lightening and the thunder boomed in her ears. The ocean recoiled. Piper threw herself in front of Leo. Katoptris glinted as she attempted to use the looking glass like bladed to jam down the basilisks open maw but jittery hands ricocheted off one of the teeth and sent her arm to the side. Hazel blinked and the thing fell to the ground, struck by lightning and smoking from a pinprick of a hole at the back of its skull. Piper looked as though she had seen a ghost, the feather in her hair pulsing, her skin pale and eyes dull.

Her eyes rolled up in the back of her head and knees gave out beneath her. Her skin screamed red, a graze up the length of her forearm and Hazel realised that when the blade bounced off the monster's tooth it must have scraped against her flesh. A watery laugh bubbled from behind them and the goddess who had caught them in a storm's grip in the first place watched on with a smile as cold as the ocean deep. Her pale eyes moved from the fallen demigod toward the horizon. Percy had reappeared and he held the bane of Poseidon in a massive fist of frozen water, the water in the air around him turning to sleet and snow. The dead crawled up Polybote's legs and tore at him while the son of the sea forced the last waves of poison down the giant's throat with such force it came spewing out his eyes. If he still had eyes.

It bent away from Percy, not a drop burning him.

"The great Percy Jackson!" The goddess shrieked with delight. "We have so much more in common than I imagined!" She clapped her hands together before dissolving into giddy giggles so high pitched they hurt Hazel's ears.

Percy dropped his grip on the water save for the frozen fist which Hazel was sure began to squeeze more tightly if the white's of the giant's eyes being so visible from a distance was any indiction. She needed to go to Piper. She needed to help her friend gasping for air on the deck of the ship. She needed to move her feet. But she was frozen and the chill had frozen her feet to the floor. The hero of Olympus, the boy who her brother had died for, delved the stygian iron blade into the Giant's gut while the dead crawled up the trail of ice and up the giant's legs, tore apart his flesh and burrowed their way into his insides. The ice gripped the giant harder and when the blade removed itself from the giant's centre, the dead grasped as if trying to climb inside and pull him apart, where guts should have spilled or blood, there was ichor and sand. Percy struck again, this time the black of the blade disappeared between the giant's eyes and his mouth fell open. Hazel was thankful for the boom of thunder and the howl of the wind; she didn't hear Polybote's cry but a shudder went through her anyway.

"Has he always been this strong!?" Kym squealed. "I have to say, I didn't buy into any of the hype but I'm impressed. "So dark and twisty… Father will be absolutely _furious_. What fun!" She clapped her hands together again and turned to the shellshocked demigods. "If he makes it through this whole Gaea ordeal, they'll just _have_ to make him a god. Something minor…" she trailed off lost in her own thoughts, long nailed fingers clicking against her exposed teeth. The nose stopped and she cackled to herself, pushed Hazel's shoulder as if looking for something from her. Gold eyes blinked mystified in the presence of the minor goddess, voice lost. "Tempests! Tropical storms! Oooh tsunamis? Oh, I'm sure we'll figure it out! You _will_ tell him to get in touch with his dear ol' sis, won't you?"

"What about Gaea?" Hazel asked dumbly. The chill curled upward from the back of her neck, clouding her thoughts.

"That saggy overstuffed bag of fertilizer? Honestly, I only agreed to torture my parents after they grounded me from ever visiting their _new_ palace. But this?" She glanced towards Percy and the giant burst into dust, darkness radiating from where he had been (if darkness could radiate) as his essence returned to Tartarus.

Whatever deal they had struck must have been tenuous at best, lest the goddess "Oh this will positively _fester_. Father will be furious. I can't wait to see the disappointment in his eyes." Her razor sharp teeth were exposed as she grinned, even in her joy flashing the fact she could rip out any one of their throats. A wave of her pearl and sea glass jewelled fingers and the goddess slipped from the boat once more, passing Percy as she did. "You are so much more than they say," she mused with all the playfulness of a dolphin and venom of a man-of-war.

Percy stepped from the wave of water that carried him to the Argos II and the weight of even his stygian iron blade tugged him down towards the deck. His dark eyes looked nearly bruised and whatever endorphins or adrenaline had been coursing through him must have been ebbing from his system. Jason sets down on the deck beside him, skin more grey than sun-kissed and face drawn in a grimace. Whether it is from witnessing what Percy has done, the wound festering on his back as it burrows to his soul, or the sight of Piper laying prone on the floor in Leo's arms, Hazel isn't sure.

"Don't just stand there! Do something!"

Where Hazel had been frozen, something inside of her snapped and she was on her knees next to Leo. Heat was radiating from the venomous wound and Piper's skin was sallow, her breathing shallow. Riches and the earth were more natural to Hazel but she could feel the vitality fleeing the daughter of Aphrodite by the second.

"You need to help her." Leo pleaded, tears falling from his eyes.

Percy stood unmoving.

"YOU NEED TO FUCKING HELP HER!"

Everyone's breath caught in their lungs and her hand rested on his shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.

"Leo," she murmured.

"N-no! No… he has to help her. He can do it. That thing with the poison… you _can_ do it." The son of Hephaestus had never looked more grave in his life, any hint of humour or sarcasm gone as he glared at Percy as if daring the older demigod to deny him.

I-I… I mea… we've never…" Stuttering as he muttered to himself, Percy came to kneel on the opposite side of her. "It might be possible but it's dangerous." And if he'd looked exhausted before, he looked haunted now face gaunt and eyes nearly black.

"We can't let her die."

"You can do it." She whispered.

Percy nodded and reached out, his hand came to rest on her arm, eyes fell closed and teeth sunk into his bottom lip. Hazel was a bridge, one hand on Leo's shoulder for support and the other on Percy's as if to ground him, Piper convulsing weakly beneath them. She didn't miss the 'we' but everything has happened so fast (was still happening so fast) that she filed it away for later, unsure what else to do with it. At first nothing happened, at least nothing that they could see. It was Annabeth who moved the others back, insisting that they give the three of them some space.

"Let him _breathe_ , gods damn it!"

Piper's breathing came more rapid, short and sharp, and her eyes rolled around behind her closed eyelids like she was fighting something no one else could see. Percy held his breath, eyebrow furrowed and the daughter of Pluto had never seen Leo look so shattered.

"It's going to be okay."

 _It has to be._

But Leo didn't blink, didn't tear his gaze away from Piper.

Purple venom began seeping from the wound, just a few drops at first, and hung in the air suspended. Percy shuddered as he kept pulling some invisible thread and Piper's lungs gasped. The poison came faster then like injecting a needle into an artery, the pounding of a distressed heart emptying it into the air. Piper's eyes opened for one brief second and the air rushed from her lungs. Percy sent the poison flying toward the ocean but Piper was motionless beneath them. Her breathing had stopped.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, not again." Percy whispered under his breath.

Annabeth, never paralysed by emotion, pushed between her and Leo. Katoptris was in her hand and she held the blade over Piper's mouth. Nothing happened. "She's not breathing… we should be able to see her breath against the surface. Leo, do you know how to do mouth to mouth?"

Frank held Hazel by the shoulders.

 _This day is never ending._

Her knees might have gone out from underneath her.

Four minutes later felt like four lifetimes and the chill had settled deep within her gut. Whatever she felt where Piper should be was getting fainter. "This isn't working," she whispered barely above a breath. When she cleared her throat she spoke more loudly but Percy was the only one to meet her eyes.

He turned to Jason, the boy practically as green as the calmed waters the _Argos II_ navigated. "We need to start her heart."

"That's what they're doing."

"But you could do it." Percy was up and beside him and what was he doing? He gripped the Roman-turned-Greek's hands in his own. "You _could_ , Jason. Lightning is just electricity, isn't it?"

"Yeah and I'm pretty sure a bolt would kill her if she wasn't already—" but the words caught in his throat.

"So don't call a storm. Don't call lightning. Shock her. Shock her heart."

"I— I can't Percy. That's not… that's not something I can do."

"And controlling poison and freezing water was never something I could do either."

Jason sputtered, blonde hair drying in the ocean breeze and fell across his eyes. "I'm not like you. I don't… I can't do that. I'm not… I'm not strong enough." It weighed in his voice just like it weighed in his eyes and on his shoulders. Reflexively, his hand moved toward the wound on his back. Percy's eyes catch the movement, just as Hazel's do, and he comes to the same conclusion.

"You _are_. You can be more than one thing, Jason. You don't have to choose. You can be a hero and a failure, a traitor and a friend. A Greek and a Roman." Blue eyes widened at the son of the sea. "You don't have to choose just because _they_ say you have to if picking one means you're not being honest with yourself. If it means that you're _less_ thank yourself."

It didn't happen all at once but Jason stood a little straighter. He glanced down to his ex girlfriend and the blonde daughter of Athena counting out chest compressions before halting so Leo could fill Piper's lungs.

"Okay. Yeah… yeah okay."

Hazel had never seen anything like it. The blonde superman took Annabeth's place and motioned for Leo to let go. For a moment their eyes locked and the son of Hephaestus didn't look like he was going to move, or like he might say something. In the end his mouth fell closed and he moved back, just enough, just far enough away that he wasn't touching Piper. Jason drew in a breath and closed his eyes, placed his hands together before laying them on her chest. A moment later Piper's eyes opened and her lungs filled on their own before she dissolved into a fit of coughing. Leo scrambled forward and tugged her into his arms, smothering her in his embrace.

"You're okay, you're okay," he whispered over and over. Each time didn't seem to be enough so he would follow it again. And again until she could finally respond and she echoed his sentiment with an, I'm okay.

For a moment it looked like he was going to pull away, or at least pull back enough to look at his best friend but as Jason stood and turned to Percy looking more himself than he had in weeks, Leo leaned forward and pressed his lips to Piper's. It was the sort of kiss that was over in a second and as he pulled away, everyone else moved their gaze as if giving the two privacy.

Not that there was long to think on it because the son of Poseidon lifted a hand to his head and his eyes rolled back. Frank and Jason both reached out and caught him before he could fall to a heap on the deck.

"He's exhausted," Annabeth mumbled. "The curse of Achilles… it makes him powerful but it also drains everything you have. We should bring him to bed." She glanced over her shoulder to where Leo was helping Piper to her feet. "Piper, I think you should lay down as well. Come on." And the seven began the slow journey below deck because honestly there were days and then there were _days_.

Hazel cast one more glance over her shoulder at the calmed ocean capped with gentle white crests free of the dead. _Nico_ , she realised. That's who she had been looking for as for the second time that day she had felt his presence.

 _You're grieving._

She was the last below deck but she couldn't shake the chill that lingered at the back of her neck.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Percy was still unconscious, laid out upon his bed. Piper had refused to lay down in the room adjacent but everyone had come to an unspoken agreement that it was better to leave her and Leo alone for a few moments. Whatever was going on there, they deserved a little privacy.

The daughter of Athena stood just out of the perimeter of her vision and lingered by the door with Jason. While the two largest demigods had settled him onto the bed she had hoovered just behind but when they retreated to give her space she hesitated. Some internal struggle was clear on her face before she skittered toward the edge of the room to where she stood now.

"Tell you what?" Although she asked, Hazel was pretty sure that she already knew.

Frank's brown eyes met her golden ones and he gave her the sort of smile that was a little sad and far more fitting on his younger, rounder face before Mars had 'levelled him up' as Leo put it.

"That you went to the Underworld?"

She sighed and shook her head as she moved her gaze from Frank to Percy. "Honestly? Because I'm till processing everything. I just needed some time."

"Haze, it was _dangerous_. You might not have come back! With the doors of death back in operation like they're supposed to be and Thanatos on the job—"

"Frank," she took his hand in her own and looked up, holding his gaze. "I needed answers and Percy needed to understand." The other centurion didn't looked pleased with her answer but Hazel knew the boy well enough to know that he wasn't asking because he expected her to continue. She dropped his hand and walked a little closer to Percy. "Sometimes things happen to you and you know _what_ happened but not why. And if you don't know why… you don't really know anything. Styx wanted something from us… something she would give to Nico that would help him. There was a reason but Percy didn't know about our exchange with Styx or what happened with Nico." Finally, she turned around facing Frank. "I needed to know what happened to my brother and Percy needed to know why."

"You should have—"

"No! I know things haven't been perfect between everyone. We're all stressed and over tired and at our wit's end. When people are stressed they do stupid things like choose sides in stupid agreements when everyone should be on the same side! We're supposed to have one another's backs. It is _actually_ us against the world. You and Jason would have tried to stop us."

Frank looked like he wanted to argue but closed his mouth just as quickly and gave a nod. "Okay."

"Okay."

The moment was broken by the sound of Annabeth's hushed voice at the door. "Honestly that's _insane_ , Leo. She doesn't need this right now."

"It's not insane!"

Piper was behind him and rested her hand atop his shoulder. Whatever he saw in her eyes when he turned around had him sputtering and eventually he nodded. "Fine, yeah, okay." And then he was gone. Hazel wanted to ask what was happening but her eyes were heavy and she felt lightheaded.

"You should get some rest." With a final look at Percy, she nodded.

"That's a good idea."

Hazel dreamed that night that she sat on the end of her bed. Her brother, wrapped in shadows, sat beside her. It was always silent, these dreams. Quiet and comfortable and the tension drained from her body but although he stayed looking forward the dark of the night was interrupted by the scratchy whisper of his voice.

"It will be okay, Hazel. Everything is going to be okay but you need to look out for each other."

She didn't have to ask who to know he meant Percy.

When she looked up there was no one sat beside her but an icy breath lingered on the back of her neck.

* * *

 **AN:** AHHH so that was a bit of a roller coaster. First of all, I just want to apologise again because this was another chapter that felt a little difficult in forming to life and by the end of a few day writing spree I just wanted to put it out into the world. For those of you who wanted more powered-up Percy and badass powers well here you go. Whether or not they're exactly what you were thinking or expecting... I'll just leave that. I'm loving the conspiracy theories (honestly they've been as varied as any since the story started) and I'm appreciating that. Here's to seeing where it all goes and which of you were wrong, right, close, or hopelessly lost! Mwahaha. Also super props to anyone who put two and two together and got that Percy was basically trying to combine his and Jason's powers to sharknado. It's a travesty and totally unbelievable that never happened (or attempted to happen) in the book series. IT wasn't quite successful and honestly it would probably take the combined knowing and cooperation of both demigods to make it as epic as it could be but alas. Desperate times and desperate measures.

Now in this series Jason has been stabbed like in the book. However, the whole pontifix thing doesn't make sense or fit in where this story is going. So Kym is convinced by the fact that she honestly wants to see her father in pain and with Percy's ridiculous power showing and the decidedly dark nature that could take (half of the damage to the Argos II is implied as caused by him likely without his knowing because he's sort of going super nova and some other things going on). As for Percy, it was implied that essentially he dissipated into foam and reapparated not all that different to how Nico could travel between or turn into shadows. So. There's a ridiculous thing he did right there.

Thanks for all the well wishes for personal life things. Honestly it's so appreciated. Now on to other sort of life thigs, the next few weekends I'm really busy and then I'm off on holiday. I'm hoping to use some of my down time for reading and writing (honestly still haven't finished BOO). I am also in the super early planning stages of a Nico-centric betrayal fic starring Gaea and some very angry gods and super hurt Percy and herculean sorts of trials. Super early stages but i'm also kind of really excited about it.


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